Trump gave 3 reasons for escalating the US involvement in Afghanistan: “to honour those American soldiers who had died there since 2001, to stop Afghanistan from becoming a haven for terrorists once more and to help stabilise the region.”.

Gosh, honoring American soldiers who died there by having more Americans die there?

Stopping Afghanistan from becoming a haven terrorists and stabling the region by killing more people and radicalizing their friends and families?

What’s insane about this is that it’s not just Trump that thinks this way. *This has been the general American policy on both sides of the aisle for the last 20 years.

Remember, both Republicans and Democrats voted to go to war in Iraq. Thousands of American soldiers were killed. The war we voluntarily started killed 500,000 Iraqis (radicalizing countless terrorists as a result). 165,000 of those killed as a result of the war were Iraqi CIVILIANS (radicalizing even more people). Tens of thousands of America soldiers were injured or disabled. Over a trillion dollars was spent (that could have been spent on schools and infrastructure here at home). And we did a lousy job taking care of those veterans when they got home.

And what was accomplished with all that pain and suffering expense? Nothing. We actually created even more terrorism by killing 500,000 Iraqis and radicalizing their friends and families.   That death we rained down gave birth to ISIS.   The only American interests that made out were the defense contractors made an absolute fortune.

So why did so many Democrats vote for that war? And why have democrats supported other things that you’d think would only be something republicans would champion? (NAFTA sending millions of jobs overseas because big business wanted to, mass incarceration & mandatory minimums, cozying up to China despite the Tiananmen Square massacre, eliminating the Glass Steagall Act which set the stage for the 2008 financial crisis, so-called “welfare reform” under Clinton which made life harder for many poor people etc. Trickle down economics has been championed by political leaders on BOTH sides of the aisle resulting in taxes on wealthiest Americans being cut in half since 1950.).

Why have democrats seemed to have moved in the direction of big business?   I thought it was just republicans that were so tight with corporations and democrats were champions of the little guy.

3 THINGS TO LOOK AT TO ANSWER THAT QUESTION:

#1 – Go to the Open Secrets website and look at the campaign donor list.   It doesn’t matter whether you look at Republicans or Democrats.  It’s bad news either way.   Corporations own our congressmen.

#2 – Ever heard of the Powell Memorandum?

The memo was written by the chair of a key committee at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It addressed what the U.S. Chamber (which is ultra-conservative) saw as an emerging threat — they were getting a bad name in the press and political leaders weren’t listening to them. The Powell Memo is largely credited with beginning the process of taking us to the current situation where, if you look at the donor list for most congressmen on either side of the aisle, you sadly realize they are mostly owned by corporations.

Here are 3 paragraphs from a Bill Moyers article on the Powell Memorandum. THE LAST PARAGRAPH (with the asterisks) will make your jaw drop as you realize what has happened here.

The newly mobilized business groups understood that Democrats and Republicans could play distinct but complementary roles. As the party with a seemingly permanent lock on Congress, Democrats needed to be pried away from their traditional alliance with organized labor. Money was key here: From the late 1970s to the late 1980s, corporate PACs increased their expenditures in congressional races nearly fivefold. Labor PAC spending only rose about half as fast. . . . Nearly half of Senate incumbents’ campaign funds came from labor PACs in the mid-1970s. A decade later, the share was below one-fifth.

By this time, however, business PACs were shifting away from their traditional focus on buttering up (mostly Democratic) incumbents toward a strategy that mixed donations to those in power with support for conservative political challengers. . . . By the end of the 1978 campaign, more than 60 percent of corporate contributions had gone to Republicans, both GOP challengers and Republican incumbents fighting off liberal Democrats. A new era of campaign finance was born:

***** Not only were corporate contributions growing ever bigger, Democrats had to work harder for them.  More and more, to receive business largesse, Democrats had to do more than hold power; they had to wield it in ways that business liked.”

More on the Powell Memorandum here:

http://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-corporations/2/

#3 – But there has to be more to it than this. What would make democrats adopt all those republican policies?

There is something bigger. THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE POLICY YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF. There was a major article about it recently in the Guardian where the International Monetary Fund admitted just how destructive the policy has been.

Click on link below to learn more about the policy that’s championed by both republicans and democrats and is causing a lot of our economic and environmental crises.  It’s also responsible for the recent rise of fascism and racism and our pursuit of destructive unnecessary wars:

https://clearblueskyoutwest.com/2017/08/17/the-most-destructive-policy-that-youve-never-heard-of/