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THE_BARBARA_LEE_SHORE

                                             August 25, 2021


I do enjoy an extended session of recriminations and gripes,
particularly when they're well-justified.

George Monbiot on Afghanistan, circa the US-pullout of 2021:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/25/blame-afghanistan-war-media-intervention

   "Any fair reckoning of what went wrong in Afghanistan, Iraq and
   the other nations swept up in the 'war on terror' should
   include the disastrous performance of the media. Cheerleading
   for the war in Afghanistan was almost universal, and dissent
   was treated as intolerable. After the Northern Alliance
   stormed into Kabul, torturing and castrating its prisoners,
   raping women and children, the Telegraph urged us to 'just
   rejoice, rejoice', while the Sun ran a two-page editorial
   entitled 'Shame of the traitors: wrong, wrong, wrong... the
   fools who said Allies faced disaster'. In the Guardian,
   Christopher Hitchens, a convert to US hegemony and war, marked      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/14/afghanistan.terrorism1
   the solemnity of the occasion with the words: 'Well, ha ha ha,
   and yah, boo. It was... obvious that defeat was impossible. The
   Taliban will soon be history.'"

   "The few journalists and public figures who dissented were
   added to the Telegraph's daily list of 'Osama bin Laden’s
   useful idiots', accused of being 'anti-American' and
   'pro-terrorism', mocked, vilified and de-platformed almost
   everywhere. In the Independent, David Aaronovitch claimed that      https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/david-aaronovitch-stop-trying-stop-war-start-trying-win-peace-9234588.html
   if you opposed the ongoing war, you were 'indulging yourself
   in a cosmic whinge'.

   "Everyone I know in the US and the UK who was attacked in the
   media for opposing the war received death threats. Barbara
   Lee, the only member of Congress who voted against granting
   the Bush government an open licence to use military force,           https://theintercept.com/2016/09/11/barbara-lees-lone-vote-on-sept-14-2001-was-as-prescient-as-it-was-brave-and-heroic/
   needed round-the-clock bodyguards. Amid this McCarthyite
   fervour, peace campaigners such as Women in Black were listed
   as 'potential terrorists' by the FBI. The then US secretary of       https://www.theguardian.com/media/2001/oct/16/warinafghanistan2001.afghanistan
   state, Colin Powell, sought to persuade the emir of Qatar to
   censor Al Jazeera, one of the few outlets that consistently
   challenged the rush to war. After he failed, the US bombed Al
   Jazeera’s office in Kabul."


One of the attempted justifications
I've heard for supporting the the
invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan is       A retrospective
that any politician who dared to vote      justification that came up
against them would be history.             a lot when trying to
                                           discuss Hillary Clinton.

                                               But it wasn't
                                               just with Hillary:

                                               https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/20/i-was-wrong-bernie-sanders-admits-barbara-lee-only-member-congress-2001-who-had-it
Cub3h at reddit commented in 2020:

  "The general mood at the time                 https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ed9zh4/i_was_wrong_bernie_sanders_admits_barbara_lee/fbhh7l6/
  meant that someone was getting
  attacked, no politician would have
  gone against that back then."

My response was:

    I get the sense that you essentially *approve* of this.  The
    next time around, when war fever is running high, will you be
    okay with just rolling with it and ending up with another
    expensive bloody mess?  Or would you want to have some leaders
    around that will try to calm things down rather than fan the
    flames?

Barbara Lee is still in office.  I live in Oakland these
days: she barely needs to campaign for re-election.


      And that actually doesn't go far enough.
      Barbara Lee could tack up a couple of signs
      that say

          *BARBARA FUCKING LEE*

      And win in a landslide.

      And yes, this is in Oakland, but Oakland is
      hardly the only blue spot on the map.




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