At 3/15/18 11:58 AM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote:
At 3/13/18 05:01 PM, EdyKel wrote:
WOW. You really outdid yourself on this one. We were talking about democrats being Warhawks, then you changed it to sanctions, North Korea, and giving a loan to Russia after their collapse from being a communist country into a democracy - before Putin made it into an authoritarian dictatorship.
you already know my format the first sentence of that was targeted to yours about defense spending which is a legit counter and economic sanctions are just one of the first things you do against opposing nations when it comes to war hawking. And I just wanted to point out the Clinton loan to Russia because of the trollishly hilarious irony of it.
of course maybe I should have done the quote separation like we do in the GC thread so it doesn't cause confusion.
No, it's not a legit counter, in any way. The reason being is hawkishness is tied to military spending, along with making aggressive threats of using military force, whether the situation warrants it or not. Sanctions, alone, is not a hawkish policy, if it was combined with threats of military force then it would be.
You originally claimed that Democrats have been hawkish since the 80's, but you continuously have failed to prove it. You could have said that many blue dog Democrats, who often aligned themselves with Republicans, supported Reagan, a Republican, and a symbol of American Hawkishness, who escalated tensions with the soviet Union and led to increase defense spending - he also got us he closest to nuclear war, because they though he was a madman.
Bush continued the policy of increase defense spending, but after years of playing a game of who goes bankrupt first with Russia, concerns over the national debt grew. It didn't stop Bush from invading Iraq and starting a year long conflict there. leading to the Clinton years, all this changed. There was no major wars, and the soviet union had already collapsed, ending the cold war. As a result, there was no need for high defense spending, and by the end of the 90's the US was actually not deficit spending as it had for the past decade and a half. So it's a real head scratcher why you keep zeroing in onto the loan, which had nothing to do with being a warhawk - unless you are a socialist.
And who could forget Bush W... He started two major wars, which continue to this day in one form or another. He ramped up military spending to historic levels, and used aggressive rhetoric against certain groups, and countries, in the middle east. And lets not forget that conservatives wanted to continue this shit, by continuing to keep up military spending when Democrats were trying to reduce it. Conservatives were always talking about military actions against ISIS, and Iran, while blaming Obama for being weak against Muslim extremists, while also not authorizing force against ISIS, or other wars.
Now we have Trump... Where Republicans are fawning over his increased military spending, his ratcheting up rhetoric against North Korea, China, Syria, Iran, certain ethnic groups, while also promoting american made missiles, and jets, and who ran on an anti-war platform. He may get us into another war with someone before the end of his first term. Trump is trying to channel Reagan, and has become the definition of being warhawkish.
As for Russia, you seem to forget that Republicans didn't trust Russia, either, for the last couple of decades. Bush W. was very cautious of them, and our relationship soured during his time in office. They got slightly better under Obama, before getting worse, with Russia taking aggressive actions to reclaim former territory that once was under soviet rule. That led to Obama to issue sanctions against their aggressive behavior, and Russia lashed out at the US baby trying to interfere in US elections, and supporting blond headed bimbo who has balls between his legs.
Gee, and here you were describing the whole Russia thing being a bogeyman, ignoring the mounting evidence that a foreign country interfered in our election in order to sow chaos by helping to elect Trump. Hmm...
I have yet to see any guilty verdicts or anything truly credible of course these are the same people you've lambasted (or it was Avie) for dropping Weapons of Mass Destruction, we also do the same thing to others and IF this is true it wouldn't matter because you could say the same thing with Clinton and all of that Saudi money that was laundered through the Clinton Foundation.
You talk of proof, and yet you have none for your own conspiracy theory. I know you don't like Clinton, I don't like her either, and I am sure she has a lot of skeletons in her closet, but there is more proof of Russia's interference in our elections, from former Russians agents, to other countries, to our intelligence agencies, to US companies, and even, more recently, The Trump administration. If you deny all this, then you are just one of those people who think that the US didn't land on the moon, or that 9-11 was an inside job - which, by the way, no one was punished for for failing on their job to prevent it.