{"id":37175,"date":"2021-04-06T14:34:52","date_gmt":"2021-04-06T22:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=37175"},"modified":"2021-04-06T14:35:47","modified_gmt":"2021-04-06T22:35:47","slug":"what-is-it-about-the-democrats-love-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/06\/what-is-it-about-the-democrats-love-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is It About the Democrats\u2019 Love&nbsp;of&nbsp;War?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcrw.com\/culture\/shows\/scheer-intelligence\/\">Scheer Intelligence<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kcrw.com\/embed-player?api_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kcrw.com%2Fculture%2Fshows%2Fscheer-intelligence%2Fdemocrats-love-of-war%2Fplayer.json&#038;autoplay=false\" width=\"100%\" height=\"140\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless=\"seamless\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Nearly two full decades into the Afghanistan War, with just a month left before the United States under President Trump had agreed to withdraw its remaining troops from Afghanistan at long last, it seems Joe Biden is going to backtrack on his predecessor\u2019s promise. At his first press conference as U.S. president, Biden stated, \u201cIt\u2019s going to be hard to meet the May 1 deadline,\u201d citing \u201ctactical\u201d and safety concerns regarding the 2,500 soldiers left on the ground in Afghanistan. Maj. Danny Sjursen, a historian and veteran of America\u2019s two longest wars, joins Robert Scheer on this week\u2019s installment of \u201cScheer Intelligence\u201d to discuss what he thinks about Biden\u2019s possible delay and what this will mean to Afghanistan\u2019s people and the American soldiers in the region.<\/p>\n<p>Sjursen, who graduated from West Point and taught there, is the author of several books, including most recently \u201cPatriotic Dissent,\u201d suspects that the main motivation behind the hesitation to withdraw by the Biden Administration and its liberal allies in corporate media and think tanks is, put simply, that the deal to pull out was negotiated by Donald Trump. Liberal distaste for the former president seems to be fueling decisions, the veteran argues, that will cost many lives. It also reveals just how powerful the military industrial complex continues to be despite the change in the White House. The military historian lists the warmongers pulling strings in D.C. who have ties to Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors that make billions off of bloodshed. Most egregiously, Sjursen highlights that it\u2019s not just the lives that are lost in Afghanistan that make up the cost of these ongoing conflicts, but, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower once powerfully said, \u201cEvery gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>While many on the left, including Sjursen and Scheer, had tentatively hoped that a Democratic president hailed as newly progressive would take the country off its perpetual military collision course, the two caution that liberals can also prove dangerous when it comes to foreign policy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs it always going to be this way?\u201d asks Scheer, expressing his concern that the Democrats are \u201ctrying to pick a fight\u201d with Russia and China \u2013 conflicts that would have a devastating impact on the entire world.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy greatest fear is that it\u2019s the Democrats that get us into a great power conflict,\u201d responds Sjursen, \u201c[because] they have banged the drum about Russia and Trump for so long, [as well as] trying to out-Trump Trump on China.\u201d The retired major goes on to pinpoint where he believes the most dangerous conflict could start as well as outline why, although he thinks neoconservatives have done abominable things, he is extremely wary of some of the cold war liberals in the Biden Administration \u2013 including Jake Sullivan, whom he\u2019s written about for ScheerPost. Listen to the full discussion between Sjursen and Scheer as the two consider the new president\u2019s foreign policy direction and try to predict what Biden will do in Afghanistan based on the people he surrounds himself with and his mixed record as a long-serving statesman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Scheer Intelligence: Nearly two full decades into the Afghanistan War, with just a month left before the United States under President Trump had agreed to withdraw its remaining troops from Afghanistan at long last, it seems Joe Biden is going to backtrack on his predecessor\u2019s promise. At his first press conference as U.S. president, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":492,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-37175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/492"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37175"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37182,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37175\/revisions\/37182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37175"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=37175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}