{"id":143492,"date":"2015-02-11T17:09:47","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T17:09:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=143492"},"modified":"2015-02-11T17:09:47","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T17:09:47","slug":"anti-war-activist-back-arms-sales-hes-secretary-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/anti-war-activist-back-arms-sales-hes-secretary-state\/","title":{"rendered":"When would an anti-war activist back arms sales? When he\u2019s Secretary of State"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Is there\u00a0any way that sending arms to the Ukrainian military doesn\u2019t escalate regional hostilities? Who cares! It makes warmongers \u2018feel better\u2019<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Secretary of State John Kerry has to be the worst anti-war activist in recorded history. Is there a military action &#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/kerrys-top-ten-flip-flops\/\">save one\u00a0<\/a>&#8211; that he hasn\u2019t supported since he came to national prominence as an anti-war activist in the early 1970s? In the the past decade and a half alone, he\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2004\/ALLPOLITICS\/08\/09\/kerry.iraq\/\">voted for the war in Iraq\u00a0<\/a>, strongly\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/washington.cbslocal.com\/2013\/05\/31\/kerry-defends-us-drone-policy-after-pakistan-hit\/\">defended drone strikes\u00a0<\/a>, was\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/08\/31\/world\/middleeast\/john-kerry-syria.html?pagewanted=all\">the chief advocate\u00a0<\/a>for the bombing of Syria in 2013, and was by far\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/john-kerry-isis-obama-destroy-coalition-2014-9\">the most hyperbolic\u00a0<\/a>cabinet member calling for a years-long, multi-country war against ISIS.<\/p>\n<p>And now Kerry has been privately telling lawmakers that he supports the US entering into a proxy-war against Russia by sending lethal weaponry to the Ukrainian military, even though the Obama administration supposedly does not yet have an official position.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s hardly alone. The US conventional wisdom machine in the US government is now hurtling towards sending offensive weapons into another foreign conflict, without the slightest concern for the devastating consequences it might bring.<\/p>\n<p>Defense Secretary nominee Ashton Carter\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/feb\/04\/ashton-carter-strikes-hawkish-tone-pentagon-confirmation-hearing\">floated the idea\u00a0<\/a>that he was \u201cstrongly inclined\u201d to arm the Ukraine government with US weapons against Russian-backed rebels in his confirmation hearing last week. Since then, as Bloomberg\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloombergview.com\/articles\/2015-02-09\/kerry-tells-lawmakers-he-s-for-arming-ukraine\">Josh Rogin reported\u00a0<\/a>Tuesday, \u201cVice President Joe Biden this weekend came very close to endorsing military aid for Ukraine when he pledged to continue to support Ukraine\u2019s \u2018security\u2019 needs.\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2015\/02\/09\/democrats-are-now-pushing-obama-to-give-guns-to-ukraine.html?via=twitter_page\">Ranking members of both parties\u00a0<\/a>on the House Armed Services Committee, Reps Adam Smith and Mac Thornberry, said this week that a bill calling for US weapons in Ukraine is imminent. (Gee, I wonder if US weapons manufacturers give Smith and Thornberry extraordinary amounts of campaign cash? Oh,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2014-02-06\/thornberry-s-committee-prospects-bring-defense-donors\">look at that\u00a0<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.opensecrets.org\/politicians\/summary.php?cid=N00007833\">they do\u00a0<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/rs\/2015\/02\/when-would-an-anti-war-activist-back-arms-sales-when-hes-secretary-of-state\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is there\u00a0any way that sending arms to the Ukrainian military doesn\u2019t escalate regional hostilities? Who cares! It makes warmongers \u2018feel better\u2019 Secretary of State John Kerry has to be the worst anti-war activist in recorded history. Is there a military action &#8211;\u00a0save one\u00a0&#8211; that he hasn\u2019t supported since he came to national prominence as an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":143493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-143492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}