<b>Dems' Me-Too Support for Nuclear Threat Against Iran</b>

Early in the campaign, various Dems were critical of Bush's open belligerence and nuclear threats in the middle east. As the race became more serious, that evaporated. Over the last year, the three leading Democratic candidates have <a href="/http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/26/dems_metoo_iran_talk.php" rel="nofollow">repeatedly</a> stated their support for nuclear threats on Iran, and for American nuclear threat in general.

Hillary Clinton told the AIPAC annual convention (the main pro-Israel lobby) at the end of January 2007,

<b>“In dealing with this threat ... no option can be taken off the table.” </b>

At the conference of the National Association of Black Journalists in Las Vegas during summer 2007, Clinton cautioned against any criticism of a permanent state of American nuclear threat against other countries:

<b>"Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace. And I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons."</b>

"Keep the peace" in this context translates as maintaining the U.S. empire through bullying smaller countries and nuclear rivals.

Former senator John Edwards was even more vehement in a speech on Iran at a 2007 Herzliya Conference in Israel.

<b>“To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table.”</b>
Edwards repeated this several times.

Sen. Barack Obama, appearing on “60 Minutes” in early 2007, declared,

<b>“I think we should keep all options on the table.”</b>

He repeated this in a Nov. 2, 2007 <a href="/http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/us/politics/02obama.html" rel="nofollow">interview </a> with the New York Times. (In this same interview he added that he did not support removing all U.S. troops from Iraq: "Mr. Obama has also talked about keeping a limited force in Iraq after withdrawing American combat units at the rate of one or two per month.")

Often people in the U.S. have been taught to believe that U.S. nuclear threats are a protection against "madmen with nukes." For that reason it is worth pointing out that the only madmen who actually ever used nuclear weapons was the Truman government of the United States and the U.S. Air Force which destroyed two cities and their civilian populations in Japan in 1945. The "madmen with nukes" sit in Washington DC, and aspiring "madmen with nukes" are raging on the campaign trail.

Who has the basic quotes on the Dem's and the occupation of Iraq: their underlying agreement with the Bush government that "being responsible" means understanding that occupying troops will "have to" stay for years (or even decades) with various "missions"?

I deeply agree with the point you are making: that we need to make a living critique of the political system we are living under, in ways that lay bare why fundamental change can't happen through that system.

And many of the criticisms I have made about the RCP's approach to religion, apply to the discussion of elections and the political structure: there is a startling lack of particularity and analysis based on deep investigation. A great deal of Avakian's work is (again) base don a textual and historical read of the Constitution, and a general exposure of the society it frames. But there is little about the particular parties, the dynamics of how candidates emerge, the role of money in the choice of political leaders, the restrictions on minor parties in "winner take all" elections, and so on.

I think we have to generate that critique of U.S. electoral democracy as part of our unfolding (and much overdue) theoretical project. And as part of that, we need to study and grasp the existing research and exposure that others have done (the kinds of sources you ask for in your post, Zerohour.)

I wrote a great deal of the RCP's electoral coverage over the last two decades. I have thought about this quite a bit, and will have quite a bit to say, when we actually get into this.

And it is important: the forces needed for revolution are today entranced by the electoral process. The arguments for revolution have (in my experience, and I believe more generally) not been sharp enough to pierce the levels of illusion and cooptation. And if we can't win broad layers of people away from the liberal Democrats (and the illusions of electoralism generally), including in the context of future political crises, then there really will not be a genuine revolutionary movement and project.