Preliminary answer: he opposed the 2002 AUMF which led to the Iraq War. He is generally anti-war; other than that I don't know that much about his foreign policy. (Crucial note: he is against war, but a strong advocate for veterans' benefits. He worked on the Senate VA Committee to reform aid programs.) Editing: He is fairly strongly pro-Israel, which troubles me personally. He supports--and supports financial aid to--the current Ukrainian government. He holds that Arab (PC?) nations should take the lead in the fight against Daesh. He vehemently opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
There's an issue of political expedience that gets overlooked by too many people. In this particular case, pro Israel is about the only position a US politician can be and keep his job. You basically got vehemently pro and pro. I want single payer healthcare goddammit but it's not politically expedient in the US so any politician who agrees with me isn't going to be able to deliver. Like vintage '08 Obama. Take the TPP. Hypothetically. I personally think it's a fast track for every manufacturing job left in America to move to Asia. Among the pro corporate IP protections that seem to be in it. But Obama is very pragmatic and he's very in favor of it. It could be that the global political maneuvers that we're not privy to make it attractive to him strategically. Or he's a sell-out shill in the pocket of the "corporations" (quotes because it's a vague term that gets thrown around all the time. He can't be in all their pockets, some of them don't like the others. Whatever.) If you can follow me, I'm actually being less cynical than most people with strong opinions on these things and less cynical than I usually am about many things. Anyway, national and international politics is this weird job where you have to make big utilitarian decisions that most people won't even know all the details of the pro/con you're weighing while still protecting a job you can literally be voted out of for pissing off too many people. Unless you live in China, then the voting not so much.He is fairly strongly pro-Israel, which troubles me personally.
Absolutely. And it's fascinating/deeply frustrating for me to see the rarity with which politically expedient positions align with popular opinion--even purely domestically. The influence of advocacy groups, of ideologues, and of political cynicism, not to mention necessary foreign relations, on our process is overwhelming.
There was a time not too long ago when being pro-Israel was considered an ideal and not simply a politically expedient position. You, unfortunately, have had to grow up not knowing much else besides Netanyahu, who is a monster. Not all Israeli politicians are like him. Let's not forget that Bernie Sanders is Jewish, as are many of his current and former Democratic Senate colleagues. Off the top of my head, Carl Levin, Russ Feingold, Charles Shumer, Joe Lieberman, all Jewish, all strong supporters of Israel, and all with major liberal cred (maybe with the exception of Lieberman, who seems like a war monger sometimes). For these men I'm sure being pro-Israel has little to nothing to do with political expediency, and much more to do with deeply held convictions. (Of course there are many non-Jewish politicians who also see support for Israel as a matter of principle and not just convenience.) Sadly, support for the ideal of Israel has become difficult in the last number of years thanks to Likud and their nonstop media machine, which by all accounts makes Fox News look like Walter Cronkite. I hope someday soon that Likud will go away, and that Israel will take a step back on their illegal encroachments into captured territory. Unfortunately, we saw in the last election that that day isn't going to come in the immediate term. But a bad government doesn't necessarily signify a bad state (we've had some really bad governments, obviously, but I think on the whole the US is a very positive state for the world). In the long game, support for democratic ideals, for human rights, for economic opportunity, all while protecting an entire people that the world has tried to do away with many times, is the right policy.
he is against war
He seems generally anti-intervention
-Problem is, the bad guys don't care if you want to fight or not, they're still going to slap you in the face. Ideally, our leader wouldn't go around slapping people but when slapped, he/she will drop the hammer. IMO.
The US and US interests can, at times, be indistinguishable. Isolationism--what you're advocating whether you know it or not--has been proven by history to be very bad for a great many people. Isolationism led to literally hundreds of millions of people needlessly suffering and dying in the 20th c. Fortunately, we had these lessons in hand in the days immediately after WWII, and we were able to somewhat contain Stalin's march across Europe. If you like and respect Western Europe at all, you can thank US interventionism, because without it Italy, France, probably even GB would all have become satellite states of the Soviet bloc in the late 40s and early 50s. This isn't to say that interventionism is always a good policy. But it helps to keep in mind that in some situations protecting our interests around the globe is good for the citizens whom we're immediately protecting, and is good for us in the long run. China and Russia currently offer the greatest examples of threats to US interests that could ultimately threaten us or our close allies. Both countries are blatantly violating the modern law we all share that says that countries can't annex territory by force. It is the most essential law of the UN. (Annexation was the catalyst that caused both world wars--Franz Ferdinand was a pretext if anything). At some point, these issues will have to be confronted (hopefully Putin will just implode, but surely China won't). We can hope that diplomacy will prevail, but rule of law is more important than diplomacy, IMO.
Define Foreign Power. If you mean a sovereign state, then yes. If you mean someone with power that is a foreigner to the US, then no. There are real threats that exist. People want to harm the US domestically and abroad. I'd rather they didn't. My guess is that Sanders rathers they didn't too. I'm just wondering to what extent he would use the US military to ensure this? It's a valid question that should be asked of all candidates. He's going to have to answer these things. I like his agenda, which keifermiller outlines well in his comment here, but a huge part of the presidency is foreign policy. Money out of politics - who is going to disagree? Income and wealth inequality? -Who, with a conscience is going to argue against this? Climate change? -Okay, I'm with ya. What about the rest? If he wants to ACTUALLY be president, we need more from him. If he just wants to ensure certain topics get in to the debates etc, then he need not elaborate. It's early in the #sillyseason, I'm sure these things will come up.
Still not convinced it's that much of an issue. I get that there are people that want to harm the US. But by and large, they can't or won't. For all its appearances, terror has killed relatively few people. As you concede, no foreign nation is threatening us. So who is? In any case, you're right, these issues will certainly come up, since we know that Bernie is a serious candidate, in it to win, etc.
You don't want this or this. A President is going to have to make BIG decisions that have life and death implications. Knowing where they stand in regard to utilizing our military is pretty important stuff imo.Still not convinced it's that much of an issue.
Yeah, its one of those things that isn't an issue until its an issue.
I've got to agree with cgod on this point :
We could sustain several 911's a year and they would do less damage to our freedoms and budget than the response to 911 has caused.
For sure. The aftermath of 911 was/is a mess. I never said otherwise, in fact I mentioned it was a reason to know how a leader feels about military might. That said, we may be able to sustain those types of attacks financially but there are other implications. Remember the national psyche after 911? It was awful. Absolutely awful. I'd rather never experience that again. Certainly not several times a year.
Actually, I don't remember it. I'd moved away from the USA about 3 years before, and from the outside, it looked like a lot of media-driven knee-jerk over-reacting (after the first few weeks anyway). Maybe I'm not being 911-sensitive enough, but damn man - you guys allowed what should have been a simple one-time tragedy to become an ongoing tragicomedy of errors which helped to further ruin a country already on the skids.
The first weeks sucked. Then we went to Afghanistan and had the world behind us. Then "W" decided to go after the bad guy that tried to kill his daddy. Imagine a plane takes out the Q1 tower and then the Eureka tower and nothing like it has ever happened before. It would have an effect on you.
I do know a little about those emotions, though. I lived in Oklahoma City in 1995.
BTW I'm gonna pretend you said "Sky Tower" and, um, hmm - some other big building in NZ.
I had to google those two towers to see what you were talking about :-)
HA! I swear I googled largest building in New Zealand. edit: Imagine a plane crashes in to the shire
Google, being helpful - "NZ? Really? Are you sure you didn't mean 'tallest building in Australia' ? I'm pretty sure that's what you meant, so here's your search results!"
What specifically do you want a leader to do to ensure a 9/11 doesn't happen again?
I don't have a specific answer, but I would hope that our president take the appropriate steps to monitor terrorist networks and their intentions. I am not an expert in these things, but I would hope our president would be. Income equality, climate change and campaign finance are all big and important topics that need addressing but our president will still have to protect our nation. There are those that say Bill Clinton specifically warned Bush about Bin Ladin and Bush didn't take the threat seriously enough. I would hope our president not be naive or myopic in their agenda. I know that as a liberal it's not cool to say that national security is important, but it is.
Well, to ignore the point of your argument here (sorry about that), a sizeable portion of people say Bush was warned about Bin Laden and didn't follow closely enough because it was politically uncomfortable for him with the personal ties his family had to Bin Laden's network. Keeping military and surveillance tabs on his friends was ironically something he avoided before explosively expanding NSA programs to do just that post-9/11.