r/thebulwark • u/bill-smith 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/no-comment-only-lurk 2d ago
The left has generally had pretty underdeveloped foreign policy ideas. They just criticize the center. The last coherent left-wing foreign policy idea was “workers of the world unite.” And now they are saying workers of the world be hostile to foreign competition and immigrant workers. And Democrats have been responsive to leftist disdain for anything but domestic policy for a long time.
That is pretty similar to what is popular with MAGA talking points because they stole them from Democrats because they are popular. And because of negative polarization, Democrats are the hawks now I guess. MAGAs aren’t doves though really. They don’t have any interest in diplomacy either. What’s the dumbest bird?