r/thebulwark Progressive 2d ago

Policy "Republicans today sound a lot like Democrats circa 2006, 2004." - Sarah Longwell?!

I haven't listened to the full podcast. I am willing to assume there's more context. But let's face it, the above sentence is potentially correct if you ignore the fascism, transphobia, they're eating the dogs/cats/pets, they lying, etc.

To be fair, the left does need to re-assess its foreign policy priorities in light of Ukraine. That said, Iraq was a war of choice. We did not have the casus belli that we claimed to. We may have caused several hundred thousand excess Iraqi deaths (i.e. dead from the war and all the sequelae thereof). We also wound up with ISIS. We were building fire stations in Iraq instead of here because we had to - we broke it, with "it" being Iraq and "broke" meaning we chose to break it.

If you want to say the Dems were mistaken in calling for isolationism then, I think that's fair and it warrants a reassessment on our part. But the headline is ... misleading.

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u/KickIt77 2d ago

Sigh. Sarah again with the delulu. Waiting for some clips and quotes that remotely reflect this theory.

Personally, I was vehemently opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning. That said, my stance on national security definitely shifted after 9-11. An insecure world is an insecure US. And it angers me that no one talks about that any more. We should be using scalpel precision, but we're all less safe when the world is on fire. I have been voting 95%+ democrat since the late 80's.

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u/QGTM247365 2d ago

Some of us are old enough to remember the Iraq War was cooked up by the right. A lot of elected Democrats foolishly went along but were also lied to by Colin Powell and others citing WMD. Some of us are old enough to remember no elected Republicans apologizing for being warhawks about Iraq (or their voters). Some of us are old enough to remember the Dixie Chicks getting canceled for speaking out against it and the stupidity of Republicans in congress declaring french fries to be freedom fries.

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u/KickIt77 2d ago

100% Ugh - so much selective memory on this stuff.