New Poll: US Military Occupations Supported By Far More Democrats Than Republicans

This is an excellent article. I am 100% committed to placing principles before personalities. That means that I need to be mindful of when I am tempted to flip my values on their head because I am attached to someone who I don't want to believe is actively violating my values. Obama was a huge lesson for me in this regard. AND disillusionment is not always a bad thing, especially if it opens us up to looking with new eyes and letting go of more and more of our ignorance and illusions. Truly, we all need to be brave enough to become fiercely committed to seeking the truth, wherever it will lead. Yes, Trump is a nightmare of greater proportions than anything I've witnessed in my lifetime. AND this does not make factual any belief systems that says all Republicans = Bad and all Democrats = Good (or its reverse). Nothing could be further from the truth. And the truth is that we did not come to this dire place we find ourselves and our planet at today because of one political party or one set of people who have voted a certain way or one set of "terrorists" who are "out there." The picture is much larger and much more complex. And nothing is healed and transformed as long as its existence is denied, distracted from, unknown, or minimized. May courage and integrity and commitment to a path of Do No Harm be contagious! - Molly

By Caitlin Johnstone

A new Politico/Morning Consult poll has found that there is much more support for ongoing military occupations among Democrats surveyed than Republicans.

To the question “As you may know, President Trump ordered an immediate withdrawal of more than 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria. Based on what you know, do you support or oppose President Trump’s decision?”, 29 percent of Democrats responded either “Somewhat support” or “Strongly support”, while 50 percent responded either “Somewhat oppose” or “Strongly oppose”. Republicans asked the same question responded with 73 percent either somewhat or strongly supporting and only 17 percent either somewhat or strongly opposing. 

Those surveyed were also asked the question “As you may know, President Trump ordered the start of a reduction of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, with about half of the approximately 14,000 U.S. troops there set to begin returning home in the near future. Based on what you know, do you support or oppose President Trump’s decision?” Forty percent of Democrats responded as either “Somewhat support” or “strongly support”, with 41 percent either somewhat or strongly opposing. Seventy-six percent of Republicans, in contrast, responded as either somewhat or strongly supporting Trump’s decision, while only 15 percent oppose it to any extent.

These results will be truly shocking and astonishing to anyone who has been in a coma since the Bush administration. For anyone who has been paying attention since then, however, especially for the last two years, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

Depressing that 30%+ fewer Democrats than Republicans support withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan. (See thread). A clear byproduct of two years of Clockwork Orange-style indoctrination by MSNBC's wall to wall lineup of spooks & neocons selling war thru partisan identity. https://t.co/K1yevED6lH

 — @MaxBlumenthal

This didn’t happen by itself, and it didn’t happen by accident. American liberals didn’t just spontaneously start thinking endless military occupations of sovereign nations is a great idea yesterday, nor have they always been so unquestioningly supportive of the agendas of the US war machine. No, Democrats support the unconscionable bloodbaths that their government is inflicting around the world because they have been deliberately, methodically paced into that belief structure by an intensive mass media propaganda campaign.

The anti-war Democrat, after Barack Obama was elected on a pro-peace platform in 2008, went into an eight-year hibernation during which they gaslit themselves into ignoring or forgiving their president’s expansion of George W Bush’s wars, aided by a corporate media which marginalized, justified, and often outright ignored Obama’s horrifying military expansionism. Then in 2016 they were forced to gaslight themselves even further to justify their support for a fiendishly hawkish candidate who spearheaded the destruction of Libya, who facilitated the Iraq invasion, who was shockingly hawkish toward Russia, and who cited Henry Kissinger as a personal role model for foreign policy. I recall many online debates with Clinton fans in the lead up to the 2016 election who found themselves arguing that the Iraq invasion wasn’t that bad in order to justify their position.

After Clinton managed to botch the most winnable election of all time, mainstream liberal America was plunged into a panic that has been fueled at every turn by the plutocratic mass media, which have seized upon unthinking cultish anti-Trumpism to advance the cause of US military interventionism even further with campaigns like the sanctification of John McCain and the rehabilitation of George W Bush. Trump is constantly attacked as being too soft on Moscow despite having already dangerously escalated a new cold war against Russia which some experts are saying is more dangerous than the one the world miraculously survived. Trump’s occasional positive impulses, like the agenda to withdraw US troops from Syria and Afghanistan, are painted as weakness and foolishness by the intelligence veterans who now comprise so much of corporate liberal media punditry. And their audience laps it up because by now mainstream liberals have been trained to have far more interest in opposing Trump than in opposing war.  

Please continue this article here: https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/new-poll-us-military-occupations-supported-by-far-more-democrats-than-republicans-95cd361ee659?fbclid=IwAR2wfnou9nyi0Mf5R44tbY9AoNQ2NweSGeUzxDDFqnM4qsvjLb_NBirRWn0