One of the most important aspects of Bernie Sanders’ appearance Sunday night on the CBS program “60 Minutes” was a section of the interview that the network chose not to broadcast, but which was nonetheless available on its website and widely cited in the media afterwards.
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders speaks to supporters in Des Moines, Iowa, February 3, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais]
This was a discussion between Sanders and interviewer Anderson Cooper over the question of US war-making, in which the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination gave his views on the circumstances in which he would order military action.
“We have the best military in the world,” was Sanders’ first response when Cooper raised the question of his past posture of opposing overseas American military interventions. Asked to spell out the circumstances in which he, as president, would send US forces into combat, Sanders replied: “Threats against the American people, to be sure. Threats against our allies. I believe in NATO. I believe that the United States, everything being equal, should be working with other countries in alliance, not doing it alone.”
When Cooper asked whether he would order military action if China attacked Taiwan—an island which the United States officially recognizes as Chinese territory—Sanders replied, “Yeah. I mean, I think we have got to make it clear to countries around the world that we will not sit by and allow invasions to take place, absolutely.”
Given that nearly all of the American wars of aggression of the past 30 years were waged under such pretexts, Sanders’ response should raise the alarm among working people and young people who have rallied to his campaign thinking that he was a genuine opponent of war.
The administration of George H. W. Bush launched the 1991 Persian Gulf war on the pretext of opposing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. The administration of Bill Clinton bombed Serbian targets in Bosnia and later bombed Serbia itself, citing acts of aggression by Serbian forces against Bosnian Muslims and Kosovars as a pretext.
The administration of George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan claiming this was a necessary response to the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. It employed the same pretext, on an even more threadbare and dishonest basis, to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.
The Obama administration waged war for all its eight years in office—in Afghanistan, Iraq, and through the use of drones and proxy forces in Syria, Yemen and many other countries. It should be recalled that during his first run for the presidency, when Sanders was asked whether he would use drones and special forces in the “war on terror,” he responded, “All that and more.”
As for “threats against our allies,” such a criterion could be used to justify US military intervention against Russia in the event of further border clashes with Ukraine or conflict between Moscow and the ferociously anti-Russian right-wing regimes in the Baltic states. Further clashes between Turkish and Syrian government forces could involve Russian forces, bringing them into a military conflict with Turkey, a NATO member.
In the event of naval conflicts between China and Japan or South Korea over disputed islets, or with any number of southeast Asian countries that contest Chinese claims to parts of the South China Sea, the US could go to war with yet another nuclear-armed rival on the basis of Sanders’ criteria.
Revealingly, in the “60 Minutes” interview Sanders did not make a single criticism of the Trump administration’s bellicose threats against Iran, Venezuela or other countries targeted for imperialist bullying by Washington. He criticized Trump’s friendly overtures towards North Korea, although he said he would not rule out meeting with the country’s dictator Kim Jong-un.
These comments follow a response by the Sanders campaign to a New York Times survey of the Democratic candidates, in which Sanders said he would consider preemptive use of military force against an Iranian or North Korean nuclear or missile test.
Sanders sought to combine his generally “mainstream” approach to imperialist foreign policy with a bit of left posturing in relation to Cuba. He told Cooper, in response to a question about his past sympathy for the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, and opposition to US sanctions against Cuba: “We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba, but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?”
Anticipating the red-baiting response of the Republicans and Cuban exile groups in south Florida, Sanders staged his own pre-emptive red-baiting against Trump, suggesting that the president had no right to criticize him as soft on Castro given his own “love letters” to Kim Jong-un.
There is another incident that raises questions about Sanders’ claims to be a candidate opposed to the “endless wars” of American imperialism. When asked by reporters about the Washington Post ’s report Friday that he had been notified by US intelligence agencies about supposed Russian efforts to interfere in the US elections in his support, he said he had received a briefing “about a month ago.”
When asked why he had not disclosed the briefing or its subject, Sanders answered, “Because I go to many intelligence briefings which I don’t reveal to the public.”
WHILE THE U.S. SQUANDERS HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS AND TROOPS TO
DEFEND THE BORDERS OF MUSLIM DICTATORS WHO HATE OUR GUTS, MEXICO IS OVERRUN
AMERICAN WITH DRUGS!
GRAPHIC: Gulf Cartel Gunmen Burn
Rivals Alive in Mexico near Texas Border
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Mexico
Will Reject U.S. Designations of Cartels as Terrorists, Says AMLO
Mexico’s president announced Monday that he will reject any
designation of cartels as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.
During his morning press conference, Mexican President Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) said he would not accept the U.S.’s potential
designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations–which could enable
direct actions in Mexico.
“We will never accept that, we are not ‘vendepatrias’ (nation
sellers),” Lopez Obrador said.
The president’s statements come
after the relatives of nine U.S. women and children who died in a cartel ambush in
Sonora revealed they would be meeting with President Donald Trump. The family is
expected to ask for some cartels to be labeled as terrorist organizations.
Last week, Tamaulipas Governor Francisco Cabeza de Vaca used the
term “narco-terrorism” to refer to the brazen attacks on citizens of Nuevo
Laredo by a faction of Los Zetas Cartel called Cartel Del Noreste. Cabeza de
Vaca publicly called out Mexico City for past inaction in confronting Los
Zetas.
Earlier this year, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) filed legislation for the most violent
cartels in Mexico to be labeled as a foreign terrorist organizations, a move that would limit cartel members’ abilities to travel
and provide tools to better clamp down on financial transactions, Breitbart
Texas reported.
On Monday morning, Lopez Obrador’s foreign relations minister
Marcelo Ebrard called designations unnecessary and inconvenient, adding that
the U.S. and Mexico have a healthy working relationship in fighting cartels.
According to Ebrard, terrorist designations would give the U.S. the legal
avenue to take direct action on cartels on Mexican soil.
Ildefonso
Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded
Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior
Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted
at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon
Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He
co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and
senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
Enough Is Enough’: Josh Hawley Calls for Sanctions on Mexican
Cartels
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said Wednesday that
“enough is enough” and called on the U.S. government to sanction Mexican officials
and cartel members complicit in trafficking meth and killing Americans.
Hawley called for harsh
retribution against the Mexican cartels complicit in ambushing and murdering
nine American women and children near the New Mexico border.
In the wake of the attack on
Americans, as well as the Mexican cartels’ complicity in Missouri’s meth
crisis, the Missouri conservative called for the U.S. government to sanction
the cartel members who are “openly slaughtering American citizens.”
“With Mexico, enough is enough. US
government should impose sanctions on Mexican officials, including freezing
assets, who won’t confront cartels,” Hawley tweeted Wednesday. “Cartels are
flooding MO [Missouri] w/ meth, trafficking children, & openly slaughtering
American citizens. And Mexico looks the other way.”
Hawley said that just over the last
14 days, there had been over 40 drug overdoses coming from drugs across
America’s southern border.
Hawley continued, “In SW Mo last two
weeks alone, over 40 drug overdoses & multiple deaths from drugs coming
across [the] southern border. Story is the same all over the state. Cartels
increasingly call the shots in Mexico, and for our own security, we cannot
allow this to continue.”
With Mexico, enough is enough. US
government should impose sanctions on Mexican officials, including freezing
assets, who won’t confront cartels. Cartels are flooding MO w/ meth, trafficking
children, & openly slaughtering American citizens. And Mexico looks the
other way
In SW Mo last two weeks alone, over 40 drug
overdoses & multiple deaths from drugs coming across southern border. Story
is the same all over the state. Cartels increasingly call the shots in Mexico,
and for our own security, we cannot allow this to continue
Hawley spent much of his August
recess traveling across rural Missouri, learning what matters to the average
Missourian.
This AM I had the great privilege of
meeting Brittany Tune, a nurse, a mother of two, a follower of God, and a remarkable
woman. Born & raised in rural Shannon Co., she has raised two kids on her
own while putting herself through nursing school & dedicating her life to
others
Brittany says meth is hammering this
community. She has many friends & family members who have been touched by
this epidemic. She worries about what it means for her own kids, ages 15 &
10. It’s much worse now than when she was growing up, she says
In an interview with Breitbart News
in September, Hawley said that meth coming from
Mexico is destroying local Missouri communities.
“Come with me to any town, any town
in the state of Missouri of any size, and I will show you communities that are
drowning in meth, drowning in it. It is literally killing people; it is
destroying families it is destroying schools and whole communities,” he said.
“Missouri is a border state,” Hawley
said, adding that “we have to got to secure the border to stop the meth” and
“stop the flow of illegal immigration.”
Hawley’s remarks about the Mexican
cartel attack on Americans mirrors that of President Donald Trump, who said Tuesday that the
United States was ready for war against the drug cartels.
“This is the time for Mexico, with
the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them
off the face of the earth,” the president tweeted.
Trump has campaigned on cracking
down on violence on the southern border as well as handling the drug cartels.
During an exclusive interview with
Breitbart News, Trump said he is “very seriously” thinking of designating the
drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).
“It’s psychological, but it’s also
economic,” Trump told Breitbart News in March. “As terrorists — as terrorist
organizations, the answer is yes. They are.”
Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) told Breitbart News in May
that he would back Trump’s potential designation of the Mexican cartels as FTOs
and that seizing cartel leader El Chapo’s assets would build the wall and make
the cartels pay for it. In a similar manner to Missouri, Daines told Breitbart
News about how Montana has been ravaged by meth from Mexican cartels.
Daines said that by seizing
“billions” of El Chapo’s assets, it “would absolutely fulfill President Trump’s
promise to build the wall and make Mexico pay for it. In this case, it would be
a Mexican cartel paying for it would be an excellent idea.”
The architect of Mexico's war on cartels was just arrested in
Texas and accused of drug trafficking and taking bribes
LUIS ACOSTA/AFP via Getty Images
·
Genaro
Garcia Luna, who was Mexico's public-security secretary between 2006 and 2012,
was arrested in Texas on Monday.
·
Garcia
Luna, the architect of Mexico's campaign against organized crime in the late
2000s, is the latest Mexican official accused of corruption and involvement in
drug trafficking.
A former high-ranking Mexican security official who led the
country's crackdown on organized crime in the mid-2000s was arrested in the US
and been charged with drug-trafficking conspiracy and making false statements.
Genaro Garcia Luna, 51, was arrested in Dallas by US federal
agents, according to the US district attorney for the Eastern District of New
York, which said it plans to seek his removal to face charges in New York.
"Garcia Luna stands accused of taking millions of dollars
in bribes from 'El Chapo' Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel while he controlled Mexico's
Federal Police Force and was responsible for ensuring public safety in
Mexico," US Attorney Richard P. Donoghue said in the release.
Garcia Luna faces three counts of conspiracy to import and
distribute cocaine and a fourth count of making false statements with regard to
an immigration naturalization application.
Garcia Luna began his career with Mexico's Center for National
Security and Investigation in the late 1980s before moving to the federal
police in the late 1990s. He was then head of Mexico's federal investigation
agency, AFI, between 2001 and 2005 and secretary of public security, then a
cabinet-level position in control of the federal police, between 2006 and 2012.
Genaro Garcia Luna Felipe Calderon Mexico
ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/GettyImages
He was 38 when appointed to the latter position by
then-President Felipe Calderon but already had nearly 20 years of experience in
Mexico's security services, much of it spent tracking organized crime and drug
trafficking.
"By his late 20s, he was considered something of a
wunderkind," according to a 2008 New York Times profile.
"He really was the architect of Calderon's war on
drugs," said Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the
US Drug Enforcement Administration, who worked with Garcia Luna in Mexico in
the 1990s.
That war comprised major military deployments inside the country
and the kingpin strategy, which entailed targeting high-level cartel figures in
an effort to weaken the cartels. This approach has been criticized for
fostering more violence, both by state forces and fragmented cartels.
According to the release, Garcia Luna received millions of dollars
in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. In return, the release states, the cartel
received safe passage for drug shipments, sensitive law-enforcement information
about investigations targeting it, and information about rival cartels — all of
which allowed it to move multiton quantities of drugs into the US.
Financial records obtained by the US government showed that by
the time Garcia Luna relocated to the US in 2012, he had a personal fortune
worth millions of dollars, according to the release, which said he is also
accused of lying about those alleged criminal acts on an application for
naturalization submitted in 2018.
'Another black eye for Mexico'
El Chapo Joaquin Guzman
Reuters
One detail in the release mirrors allegations made during the trial of Sinaloa cartel chief
Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who was convicted on drug trafficking and
other charges in the Eastern District of New York in February.
"On two occasions, the cartel personally delivered bribe
payments to Garcia Luna in briefcases containing between three and five million
dollars," the release states.
During testimony in November 2018, Jesus "El Rey"
Zambada — the youngest brother of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, who is
considered Guzman's peer at the top of the Sinaloa cartel and now its de facto
leader — said the cartel twice made multimillion-dollar payments to Garcia Luna.
A $3 million payment, which "El Rey" said was to
Garcia Luna at a restaurant in Mexico City between 2005 and 2006, was to ensure
he would pick a specific official as police chief in Culiacan, the capital of
Sinaloa state and the cartel's home turf.
"El Rey" said the other payment, between $3 million
and $5 million, was in 2007 and was to make sure "he didn't interfere in
the drug business" and that "El Mayo" was not arrested. Zambada
also said that the Sinaloa cartel and its partners also pooled $50 million in
protection money for Garcia Luna.
A press officer for the Eastern District of New York did not
immediately respond when asked by email whether the charges unsealed Tuesday
against Garcia Luna stemmed from allegations made during Guzman's trial.
At the time, Garcia Luna denied Zambada's claims, calling them a
"lie, defamation and perjury." On Tuesday, Calderon said
he had heard of Garcia Luna's arrest but was awaiting confirmation and further
details, tweeting that his "position will always be in favor of justice
and the law."
El Chapo Guzman home town
REUTERS/Roberto Armenta
Vigil, who was the DEA assistant country attache to Mexico
during the 1990s, was skeptical of the allegations made during the Guzman trial
and said he was "surprised" by the arrest on Tuesday.
"I worked with Genaro Garcia Luna," Vigil said.
"We, DEA, had a very good working relationship with Genaro. At that time
there were no allegations of corruption. There we coordinated investigations
with them, and we never saw any evidence of compromise."
The allegations made during that trial seemed "less than
credible," Vigil said, in large part because Guzman was arrested twice
during the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who followed
Calderon into office in 2012.
But it was possible that a high-ranking Mexican official could
obscure activities in one area from their work with the US in another area.
"In terms of what the US sees, [it's] very different than
what occurs within the Mexican government, but through time if he were taking
bribes, obviously some of those investigations, you would've known if they had
been compromised," Vigil said. "But there's some areas that could be
compartmentalized in terms of efforts by the Mexican government."
If convicted on the drug-conspiracy charge, Garcia Luna faces a
mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life in jail.
"Today's arrest demonstrates our resolve to bring to
justice those who help cartels inflict devastating harm on the United States
and Mexico, regardless of the positions they held while committing their
crimes." Donoghue, the US attorney, said in the release, thanking the DEA,
the Department of Homeland Security Investigations, as well as police in New
York City and New York state.
Regardless of the outcome of the case, it tarnishes a bilateral
relationship in which cooperation against organized crime and drug trafficking
has been a major component.
"I don't know what the evidence is against Genaro Garcia
Luna," Vigil said Tuesday, "but it certainly is another black eye for
Mexico."
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