Corporate media isn’t lefty. They serve the interests of the empire. As long as the right people profit from the wars, they will be pro war.
The “lefty” media like CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, NYT is pretty socially liberal and something like centrist or slightly conservative on domestic social welfare programs and absolutely pro-military/war. It just is possible to be pro-trans-in-the-military, pro-choice, pro-BLM and pro-military/imperialism/US dominance.
I have to wonder what the catch is with this Afghanistan withdrawal. We relocating them to Syria?
What in the absolute fuck, there is no way Biden is going to build more wall. Why in the absolute fuck would he do that? Does he think it’ll win over Trumpers or something?
That is just such a massive political blunder for even a shitlib I find it hard to believe. All that will do is make the base furious and not win him/the party any support. There is no way his advisers are letting him continue building the wall. Just no fucking way.
It’s just too fucking crazy.
My guess is that the catch is that the US will withdraw the military from Afghanistan, declare a PR victory for Biden, and continue using CIA or Blackwater-type contractors to do the dirty work on the ground.
Gotta agree.
wtf at building the wall by the Biden admin!!?
Trump will get to crow about it being a great idea and most of the US population (apart from the asshole minority of the shitty racist types) will hate the wasted taxpayer $$.
That was what I thought as well, but they will get killed and everyone gets really sad when “US contractors” get killed in Iraq, and the usual suspects immediately demand something be done.
Clearly they’re not above a plan that’s bound to fall apart quickly, but it did give me pause. I think I’ll marginally stick with a new peace initiative that fails and then try and fudge this deadline somehow. Maybe I’ll revise after Biden says whatever it is he’s going to say.
biden is sucking at immigration right now. not sure how far to the left biden can be pushed, first 100 days is almost up.
the sad circumstances are that trmp was actually a very poor manager, so even when he got money for the wall, he sucked at managing to build it. biden’s administration is going around fixing gov’t and the CBP and ICE more becoming more efficient before agenda can change.
https://www.axios.com/white-house-meeting-problem-solvers-caucus-00ecbba7-39be-4d38-8beb-c360247ac293.html
This should really give Biden that leftward nudge he needs!
This for sure. Right now there are 18000 contractors and 2500 regular troops in Afghanistan. Increasingly (for both the US and Russia) soldiering is contracted out. I’ve mentioned several times how we killed something like 200 Russians in an attack in Syria, but it went down as kind of nbd because they working for some Russian security company rather than official Russian troops.
I know I’m at fault in this conversation as well, but I feel like we really shouldn’t be conforming to imperialist newspeak by calling them contractors. “Mercenaries” at the very least, or “murder-for-profit occupiers” or “ruling class goons”, or something else that keeps us aware of what is really happening and who’s interests they are serving.
It really really sucks but you know what else sucks: polling on immigration.
Sure. And this is also something where the mercenaries on the ground are sometimes from nearly invisible classes. A Peruvian and two Ugandans are among the list of most recent killed mercenaries in Iraq on “our side”.
There’s pretty broad support for stuff like a path to citizenship.
If our side never achieves anything meaningful and lasting does the polling really matter? Ok cool we win elections at a slightly higher frequency but then implement a Trump-lite agenda. I don’t personally see that as a win.
Literally the entire engine driving the neo-lib train is that it is more viable electorally. After experiencing 30 years or so of that it’s hard for me to see that as a viable strategy to actually accomplish anything.
In my efforts to find a better term for “contractors”, I forgot that the most accurate one had already been coined by an expert on the topic. Whether the armed goons are wearing US flag patches on uniforms or Blackwater fatigues, this is who they are:
Joe is going to die while giving a speech
Sleepy Joe doesn’t even come close to describing it
Smedley’s heroism helped protect the shitlib of his day, FDR, from an overthrow by actual fascists.
Maybe Democrats need to lean into the education gap and abandon uneducated whites.
People who say they support “a path to citizenship” are lying.