CD 2 GOP candidates fail the foreign policy test

On Thursday evening, there was a CD 2 GOP candidate debate sponsored by the Greater Vail Chamber of Commerce and the League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson. The candidates responded to questions put to them by students from the Valley Academy and High School.

Keep in mind that these are high school students. Several of them will graduate and will volunteer to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces. Some may even attend one of our military academies. All of the male students will have to register with the Selective Service (draft) for their 18th birthday.

Recent wars and the threat of wars were clearly on their mind. When the candidates were asked about recent events in Iraq, all three GOP candidates for CD 2 expressed no reservations about sending some of these students off to fight and die in a sectarian civil war in Iraq that even the Iraqis do not fully comprehend. These students are to fight and die in the sandbox of Iraq so that GOP politicians can pound their chests and talk tough about American military power. Clearly, no lessons have been learned by these candidates over the past 13 years of war.

The Arizona Daily Star reports, Middle East concerns dominate CD2 congressional debate:

The three Republicans running in Congressional District 2 turned their sights on President Obama Thursday night, eager to comment on a new strategy in Iraq.

Small-business owner Shelley Kais, retired Air Force Colonel Martha McSally and retired Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Chuck Wooten all were critical of the administration, telling an audience in Vail the U.S. has been absent on the world stage.

Wooten began discussing the issue by lamenting that only 17 percent of the U.S. Congress has served in the military.

The U.S. had a chance to fight the Islamic militant group in Iraq known as ISIS in its more nascent of stages, as their forces left Syrian cities to go into Iraq, he said.

“We had the opportunity, ladies and gentleman,” Wooten said, “to stop them cold in their tracks, to decimate them and destroy them. And we had the weapons to do it.”

Really? It was a year ago that Obama Sought Approval by Congress for Strike in Syria over Syria’s use of chemical weapons (the casus belli for military action, not ISIS). Congress balked because it did not have the votes to pass an authorization for use of military force (AUMF) — you know, that whole Article I, Section 8 thing in the Constitution about how Congress shall have the power to declare war. The American people were overwhelmingly opposed intervention in the civil war in Syria. 7 in 10 Americans were opposed to the AUMF. CNN poll: Public against Syria strike resolution.

So Obama sought a diplomatic solution to Syria’s chemical weapons. Obama puts off war vote in Congress to explore Russian-brokered deal with Syria:

Obama made the dramatic last-minute turnaround in closed-door meetings with members of Congress and then in a prime time address to the nation, even as he was dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to Geneva to meet with his Russian counterpart later this week. Their goal: a binding resolution in the United Nations Security Council, where Russia had threatened to veto any move against its ally in Syria.

“Over the last few days, we’ve seen some encouraging signs, in part because of the credible threat of U.S. military action,” Obama said in a 15-minute address from the White House. “It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed . . . but this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force.”

Diplomacy succeeded with respect to Syria’s chemical weapons. By July of this year, US ship to destroy last of Syria’s declared chemical weapons:

It’s been a little over a year since President Barack Obama accused the Syrian government of crossing a “red line,” with the use of poison gas against civilians. This week, the last of the country’s declared chemical weapons stockpiles are sailing to their eventual demise.

* * *

It was a major milestone when the weapons left the Syrian port of Latakia, said Ahmet Uzumcu, the chief of the OPCW.

“Never before has an entire arsenal of a category of weapons of mass destruction been removed from a country experiencing a state of internal armed conflict,” he said.

Just imagine what the ISIS terrorists would be doing today if they had seized a supply of Syria’s chemical weapons. And not one American life was sacrificed in destroying Syria’s chemical weapons. That’s a major success, Mr. Wooten.

[Wooten] apologized for previously stating that Obama was missing in action from the international issues, saying it was more accurate to label the President as absent without leave. (AWOL)

“But when you have a commander in chief that lacks a spine — yes, I said it — this is what we have,” Wooten said.

Accusing the Commander-in-chief of being AWOL, i.e., of desertion, demonstrates that Wooten is nothing more than a right-wing bomb thrower playing to the base instincts of far-right partisanship. He is unfit for public office.

Martha McSally said she believes the U.S. could have done more to support more moderate rebel forces when they first took up arms against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

She said the failure can be traced to the current leadership in Washington, D.C.” I think we can agree that the world is increasingly a dangerous place and America is failing to lead right now. The best thing that the people of CD2 can do in order to address this issue is to elect someone to Congress who understands the issue of national security,” McSally said.

First of all, the U.S. is in fact supporting “moderate rebel forces” in Syria. CIA-funded weapons begin to reach Syrian rebels (Sept. 12, 2013); Advanced U.S. Weapons Flow to Syrian Rebels (April 18, 2014); Obama Proposes $500 Million to Aid Syrian Rebels (June 26, 2014).

Secondly, these so-called “moderate rebel forces” are fighting alongside Al Qaida forces against both Syria and ISIS. Al-Qaeda disavows any ties with radical Islamist ISIS group:

ISIS “is not a branch of the al-Qaeda group . . . does not have an organizational relationship with it and [al-Qaeda] is not the group responsible for their actions,” al-Qaeda’s General Command said in a statement, marking the first time the leadership has formally repudiated an affiliate.

* * *

It also leaves Jabhat al-Nusra, which is widely regarded among Syrians as more moderate than the hard-line ISIS, as the sole representative of al-Qaeda in Syria, where a multitude of armed groups are battling to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and also, in some places, one another.

When the U.S. arms these so-called “moderate rebel forces” in Syria, there is no way to prevent these arms from also winding up in the hands of Al Qaida, anymore than our arming and training the army of Iraq prevented this: Iraqi soldiers, police drop weapons, flee posts:

Some police took off their uniforms, dropped their weapons and ran, according to the journalist.

A journalist with Agence France-Presse, who was fleeing the city with his family, reported security forces had abandoned vehicles and a police station was set on fire.

Iraq’s army abandoned American vehicles, weapons, and munitions to the ISIS terrorists. America thus indirectly armed ISIS. This has likely occurred in Syria as well. We need to be cautious about who we arm.

Martha McSally’s  “national security” expertise: “I’m going to bring leadership that I’ve showed in the military and leadership that I showed when I took on the Pentagon — when I thought there was a policy that was wrong, that was making our servicewomen wear Muslim garb in Saudi Arabia.” That again?  McSally is a “one trick pony.”

Martha McSally’s one claim to fame, her opposition to wearing a head scarf while in Muslim countries, was not universally shared by her fellow female officers in the Air Force. See, Lt. Col. Cheryl Garner, USAF Best Defense guest columnist for Foreign Policy (March 2011) Hey, it should be our choice – The Best Defense – Foreign Policy.

McSally is an experienced fighter pilot. If she really wants to make herself useful she should volunteer to go help train Iraq’s Air Force — so that American pilots do not have to serve as the proxy Iraq Air Force.

And never not forget that McSally is endorsed and supported by a Neocon war monger and one of the architects of the Iraq War that created this mess, John Bolton. Questions for Martha McSally: Are you a Neocon war monger like your endorser John Bolton? McSally will take her marching orders from the same cadre of Neocon war mongers who led this country into the Iraq War mess in the first place.

Shelly Kais warned of a larger, much more local problem, stemming from instability in the Middle East: the possibility of Islamic terrorists slipping into the country, coming up through Mexico and into Southern Arizona.

“The fact we don’t have a secure border allows ISIS recruiters to show up right here,” Kais said.

 This has been a favorite conspiracy theory among the far-right fringe for years. Hezbollah terrorists  with prayer rugs are crossing the Mexican border into the U.S. Just Google it. This conspiracy theory has just been updated to the terrorist group du jour, ISIS. It is part and parcel of Islamophobic fear mongering among the Christian Right about Sharia law being imposed in the “Christian nation” of America.

This is an instance where “None of the Above” should be an option for voters on the ballot. None of these candidates are fit for public office.