CIA Democrats call for aggression against Russia, run pro-war campaigns in 2018 congressional races

The Democratic Party is widely favored to win control of the House of Representatives in the US midterm elections November 6, with projections that it will gain 30 to 50 seats, or even more, well above the net gain of 23 required for a majority.

The last time the Democratic Party won control of the House from the Republicans was in 2006, when it captured 30 Republican seats on the basis of a limited appeal to the massive antiwar sentiment among working people after three years of disastrous and bloody warfare in Iraq, and five years after the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

In stark contrast, there is not a hint of an antiwar campaign by the Democratic challengers seeking Republican seats in the 2018 elections. On the contrary, the pronouncements of leading Democrats on foreign policy issues have been strongly pro-war, attacking the Trump administration from the right for its alleged softness on Russia and its hostility to traditional US-led alliances like NATO.

This is particularly true of the 30 Democratic congressional nominees in competitive races who come from a national-security background. These challengers, previously identified by the World Socialist Web Site as the CIA Democrats, constitute the largest single grouping among Democratic nominees in competitive seats, more than state and local officials, lawyers or those wealthy enough to finance their own campaigns.

The 30 national-security candidates include six actual CIA, FBI or military intelligence agents, six State Department or other civilian national security officials, 11 combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, all but one an officer, and seven other military veterans, including pilots, naval officers and military prosecutors (JAGs).

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All the other national-security candidates accept as a basic premise that the United States must maintain its dominant world position. The most detailed foreign policy doctrine appears on the website of Amy McGrath, who is now favored to win her contest against incumbent Republican incumbent Andy Barr in the Sixth Congressional District of Kentucky.

McGrath follows closely the line of the Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, supporting the Iran nuclear deal that Trump tore up, embracing Israel, warning of North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, and declaring it “critical that the US work with our allies and partners in the region to counter China’s advances” in the South China Sea and elsewhere in Asia.

But Russia is clearly the main target of US national-security efforts, in her view. She writes, “Our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has testified that Russia is the greatest threat to American security. Russia poses an existential threat to the United States due to its nuclear weapons and its behavior in the past several years has been disturbing. Russia’s aggression in Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine, and Syria has been alarming. It’s becoming more assertive in the Arctic, likely the most important geostrategic zone of competition in the coming decades. The US should consider providing defensive arms to Ukraine and exerting more pressure on Moscow using economic sanctions.”

She concludes by calling for an investigation modeled on the 9/11 Commission into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

Here are some of the most odious candidates running.

Max Rose, a combat commander in Afghanistan now running in New York’s 11th Congressional District (Staten Island and Brooklyn), calls for “recognizing Russia as a hostile foreign power and holding the Kremlin accountable for its attempts to undermine the sovereignty and democratic values of other nations.” Rose is still in the military reserves, and took two weeks off from his campaign in August to participate in small-unit drills.

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Joseph Kopser, running in the 21st District of Texas, is another anti-Russian firebrand, writing on his website, “As a retired Army Ranger, I know first hand the importance of standing strong with your allies. Given Russia’s march toward a totalitarian state showing aggression around the region, as well as their extensive cyber and information warfare campaign directed at the U.S., England, and others, our Article 5 [NATO] commitment to our European allies and partners is more important than ever.” He concludes, “Since the mid-twentieth century, the United States has been a principal world leader—a standard that should never be changed.”

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Dan McCready, an Iraq war unit commander who claims to have been born again when he was baptized in water from the Euphrates River, calls for war to be waged only “with overwhelming firepower,” not “sporadically, with no strategy or end in sight, while our enemies like Iran, North Korea, Russia, and the terrorists outsmart and outlast us.” He is running in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District, adjacent to the huge military complex at Fort Bragg.

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One military-intelligence candidate cites immigration as a national-security issue, echoing the position of the Trump administration, which constantly peddles scare stories that terrorists are infiltrating the United States disguised as immigrants and refugees. That is Richard Ojeda, running in the Third Congressional District of West Virginia, who publicly boasts of having voted for Trump in 2016, in the same election in which he won a seat in the West Virginia state senate running as a Democrat.

Ojeda writes on his web site, “We must also ensure that terrorists do not reach American soil by abusing our immigration process. We must keep an up to date terror watch list but provide better vetting for those that go onto the watch list.”

A career Army Airborne officer, Ojeda voices the full-blown militarism of this social layer. “If there is one thing I am confident in, it is the ability of our nation’s military,” he declares. “The best way to keep Americans safe is to let our military do their job without muddying up their responsibilities with our political agendas.”

He openly rejects control of the military by civilian policy-makers. “War is not a social experiment and I refuse to let politics play a role in my decision making when it comes to keeping you and your family safe,” he continues. “I will not take my marching orders from anyone else concerning national security.”

The rest of the CIA democrats have the same ideas when it comes to whether the country stays on the war path or if it's time that democrats become the fake anti war party again like they were before Obama got elected. Isn't it interesting that the people who were adamantly anti war during the Bush years decided that war wasn't so bad as long as a charming and charismatic person was president?

Will this get people to wake up and see what the purpose of Russia Gate has been? For them to give their permission for us to go to war with Russia? Or will they continue to ignore that they have been fed one of the biggest propaganda campaigns ever and they fell for it? And will they vet these candidates and see what they stand for or will they vote for them just because they have a D after their names?