Who is your ideal candidate?

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I'll give you three.

Germany 1939-Poland 1939: Germany invades Poland with the aim of conquering the Polish people and subjugating them to the German government.

North Korea 1950- South Korea 1950: North Korea invades South Korea with the aim of conquering the South Korean people and subjugating them to the North Korean government.

Iraq 1990- Kuwait 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with the aim of conquering the Kuwait people and subjugating them to the Iraqi government.

You nailed it! The hollowing out of the political center is what bothers me the most.

2 is tripe and starting the story in the middle.



And 3 is thanks to the US again putting Saddam in power, arming him and supporting him during his worst crimes.

The circumstances leading upto the wars are immaterial. You never answered the question of is "If you would support war to defend a country being attacked by a neighbor."

The U.S. putting Saddam in power doesn't change the fact he attacked Kuwait. Korea being divided in two doesn't change the fact the North attacked the South. Poland having the misfortune of residing between Germany and Russia doesn't change the fact that the Germans attacked them.

In each of these cases do you think it is right to defend the nation that is being attacked, even if your nation is un-involved?

I won't argue that war is anything other than a terrible, brutal, and tragic thing, that humanity should actively seek to avoid.

However, I think there cases where it is necessary.

A friend of my family was widowed in the Bosnian War. Her husband was the victim of genocide.

Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Kuwait - all very successful military interventions that prevented greater loss of life.

Rwanda - we pulled out in the full knowledge that there was a genocide ongoing. We condemned thousands to death.

Syria - we allowed Assad to bomb his own people on the condition that he didn't use chemical weapons. He used chemical weapons and Obama backed down. (One of the few things I like about Trump is that he tried to stop Assad using them). We also could have done much more to prevent the rise of Daesh. Our limited bombing campaigns played a big role in driving them back but we could have stopped them earlier.

So for every "wait to you see your best friend killed on the battlefield", there's a "wait until your dad gets dragged away and executed", "wait until your mother chokes to death on sarin", "wait until your children get crushed by Iraqi tanks".

Now it would be one thing is Tulsi Gabbard said "we should just leave the Syrians to die". That's probably an unfair characterisation by me, but that brutal and pragmatic reality is something we sometimes have to accept. It is impossible to right every wrong, and sometimes when we try we make mistakes which make the situation worse. But Gabbard doesn't just say "we can't fix this problem", she says "there is no problem".

Gravel isn't a serious candidate (he openly admits to not wanting to win, he just wants to change the conversation). He avoids Gabbard's worst traits of standing up for dictators. My objection to him is that some of his foreign policy prescriptions - like closing all overseas military bases, halving the military budget, and not intervening if North Korea attacked the South - would be disastrous both for local populations and for US security. But he seems like a sincere individual who generally has a more liberal stance on social issues than Gabbard.

I find it interesting that your second choice for president is Donald Trump. Mr Trump is considerably more hawkish than any of the Democratic contenders. He surrounds himself with pro-war Generals and is good friends with Lindsey Graham. He was happy to bomb Assad, he used the third biggest bomb in military history against ISIS, he nearly started a nuclear war with North Korea, and now he's removed Iran's path to joining the international community and it looks extremely likely his actions will lead to war there. He's also expressed a willingness to invade Venezuela. Doubtless the world would be a more peaceful place with a Democrat in the White House.

I personally am, if not quite a pacifist, then something close, and I'd definitely be a terrible army recruit. But I'm also straight edge while advocating for the legalisation of all drugs. I'm probably going to end up in a monogamous heterosexual relationship while advocating for sexual freedom, including government recognition of polygamy. If society as a whole were modelled on my life then it would collapse.

No they are most important. Without the US the wars would never have happened. To make out that the US attacks people to stop atrocities is beyond ludicrous. One thing the US never tries is diplomacy, so that would always be my first option. And if you actually listened to the Chomsky video it is clear there was a chance war could have been avoided with diplomacy. How did the US going in and killing 1.5 million people make things better? Bombing the North until there was nothing left to bomb so they started hitting agricultural targets (a war crime). Then the US attacking Iraq on a pack of lies about babies being dragged out of incubators then having brutal sanctions put on Iraq that killed over 500,000 children, how did that help?

As I pointed out above, the intervention in Kuwait was a disaster. The biggest massacres happened after the intervention in Kosovo. A US government official admitted the real reason for going in was because the government wasn't playing ball for US business interests. Nothing to do with stopping atrocities, and the worst ones happened after intervention as I said, and a lot by the opposition. Also to point out that at the same time the US was arming and supporting Turkey as they were massaging tens of thousands of Kurds.

Rwanda was also caused by the US.

No Assad did not 'bomb his own people'. The 2013 attack was carried out by Turkish backed Jihadists. Obama wanted to launch an illegal strike that was against the Constitution and International Law based on a YouTube video. Luckily he was forced into going to Congress by army Generals and via public pressure. The US destroyed Assad's chemical weapons in 2013 so it's garbage to suggest any further attacks were carried out by him. In 2017 Syrians bombed a terrorist centre with chemical weapons inside. Last year the 'attack' didn't even take place and Trump bombed Syria because of a YouTube video by Al Qaeda. Not going into Iraq in 2003 on a pack of lies would have meant no ISIS at all.

It's not Syrians that are being killed by the Syrian army, it's Al Qaeda forces from across the globe mostly. Foreign backed Jihadists. The problem is the US and others supporting Al Qaeda in Syria to try to force Assad to give up territory so Turkey can get rid of its Kurdish problem and Israel and the Saudis can weaken their rival.

Na, Clinton would have started a war with Russia and would have ended up attacking Iran. Trump's problem is the people around him like John Bolton.

Take the U.S. out of it. Say you're some nation with no direct ties to the situation. The U.S. has supported a brutal dictator in Iraq. That dictator invades the neighboring state of Kuwait. Do you think it is just to defend Kuwait or is that the people of Kuwait's problems?

No need to rehash our Korean war debate from like a month ago, I threw that one in mostly because I knew it would annoy you. But for the audience who may not have seen it. How did the U.S. killing 1.5 million make things better. They saved the South from being conquered by Kim Il Sung.



Nowadays South Korea is one of the wealthiest most prosperous countries in the world, while North Korea is still under the rule of the brutal Kim family.

Again, read what I wrote. I would try diplomacy first. Then blackmail. Not just invade and make things a millions times worse.

And again if you listened to video there was a chance of unification before the war but the US chose war instead. It's nice how you just brush off 1.5 million people being murdered though.

Nice how you brush off the estimated 1.6 million killed under Kim Il Sung.

So the answer to that is kill the same amount of people?

The answer to that is to prevent him gaining power over more people. How many in North Korea have died under the Kim family's rule since the Korean war. Far more than died in the war.

Safe to say the world would be a much worse place if the Kims ruled all of Korea. Over 50 million people live in South Korea - that's 50 million people saved from the Kims. Yes, 1.5 million deaths is absolutely worth it. And that's without even considering the huge contribution that South Korea makes to the world which would be annihilated in your alternate reality.

I'm not sure it's true to say that Americans never try diplomacy. Obama tried diplomacy with both Cuba and Iran and left relations in a better state than he found them. I'm sure the US is routinely using diplomacy to achieve its goals. But diplomacy is not always a viable course of action.

Who of them wants to fight lobbyism? All others and their staff will just do what the lobbists pay them for regardless of what they are telling before.

With diplomacy there could have been unification. Supporting killing 1.5 million people and not trying diplomacy is horrific.

That's outrageous propaganda and shows massive ignorance of history. Well and "1.5 million deaths is worth it" is straight out of the Nazi handbook. Himmler excused killing millions of Jews because not doing it would lead to more deaths. The country could have been unified! Listen to Chomsky on the issue and actually try to learn something.

And now the US has broken the Iran deal. It was more through pressure from Europe that he did the deal. War is hardly ever the right option as I explained above. Especially when it's pretty much always based on lies. Intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria have opened the gates of hell and been disgusting disasters. The US is a gangster state, never is real diplomacy. And the US is threatening Cuba again.