Greetings, video fans! For the next few video news posts, I thought I'd take one major issue and compare the four major candidates for President. So let's start today with war. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! We've been trying to "improve" the Middle East since at least the time of the Crusades. I'd say it's time we stop. Our arrogant interference has done more harm than good. As most of you probably know, ISIS is embedded in cities and villages in the Middle East. They are not in some isolated area where they can be targeted specifically. To "take them out" will create millions more deaths from collateral damage.

So let's see what the candidates say. I like videos because there's nothing more convincing than hearing and seeing people in their own words. OTOH, some people may have difficulty playing videos on their devices. So for each, I will transcribe the pertinent portions below the video for those who would rather read than watch. I tried to find recent videos from this year, since candidates' positions "evolve".

Edited to add Methodology: I searched YouTube for "candidate's name war" and if that did not return results, "candidate's name terrorism". I also Googled the same to ensure there was no more recent position that perhaps had not made it to video yet. Where possible, I chose original clips purely of the candidate speaking, not any commentary that came afterward. I chose short clips so that someone watching all the clips in this thread would not have to spend too much time on them, and then added the time indicator where I transcribed in case readers want to shorten their viewing further to just that section; but I watched longer clips where available and believe the shorter clips best represent the candidates' whole stance on the issue. My intent is to present reasonably objective truth, but after watching multiple clips I find one viewpoint persuasive.

Here's Hillary's acceptance speech at the DNC:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewP9Yf50Fpo width:500]

I have laid out my strategy for defeating ISIS. We will strike their sanctuaries from the air and support local forces taking them out on the ground. We will surge our intelligence so we detect and prevent attacks before they happen. We will disrupt their efforts online to reach and radicalize young people in our country. It won't be easy or quick, but make no mistake, we will prevail.... A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.

Indeed, Trump would take war further than ever before: Target terrorists and their families; and he refuses to rule out using nuclear weapons - no recognition whatsoever that there would be fallout. I give you two clips because he rambles, repeats, and is difficult to pin down:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1eXRXL0nkk width:500]

[1:40] The thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families.... They care about their lives, don't kid yourselves. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSnVb4i_ZZ4 width:500]

[1:35-1:45] I don't rule out anything. I would say definitely, nuclear weapons are a last resort.

Now here is Jill. What a YUGE contrast. It's so good I had trouble cutting the transcript:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd6gLKkaBD4 width:500]

The Green New Deal not only turns the tide on climate change, it revives the economy as the New Deal did during the 1930s, and importantly, it makes the frigging wars for oil obsolete....

Because you don't need these wars for oil, we can cut that dangerous, bloated military budget. Because that budget is not making us safer, it is making us more endangered. What has it done? Since 2001, we have spent $6 trillion, according to a Harvard study... by the time we are done paying for the healthcare of the wounded soldiers, we will have paid $75,000 per household for these wars for oil since 2001; we will have killed a million people in Iraq alone, which is not winning us the hearts and minds of the Middle East you can be sure; and we will have killed and maimed tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers.

And what do we have to show for it? is the other thing. Exactly what we have to show is failed states, every one of them; mass refugee migrations, which are tearing apart the Middle East and which are tearing apart Europe; and worse terrorist threats. And I want to underscore that because all we hear 10 times a day in the media is how we have to drop more bombs and shoot them up and that's the solution to ISIS.

Well actually, who created ISIS? We created ISIS.... This is a bipartisan disaster, I want to be clear, but it goes far back beyond ISIS.... So we created this jihadi terror movement, it went on from the mujahedeen to the Taliban to al Qaeda and then to ISIS. With each turn of the wheel, the cycle of violence becomes more terrible, more unmanageable, more of a disaster. More of the same is not the solution. It's time to stop a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for the weapons industry. And we need to be able to talk about this.

This is why the political predator parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, work so hard to silence us. Because they cannot hold a candle to the facts, to the truth, and to the basic American values, which are values of peace and community and justice and human rights. This is what our foreign policy needs to be based on.

So we call for a peace offensive, that's what we need in the Middle East. We need to put a weapons embargo on the Middle East. We are arming all sides of the conflict and benefiting from it, $100 billion in weapons to the Saudis alone in the last 10 years. So we are applying a flame thrower to the Middle East. We need a weapons embargo, which we can initiate. We need a freeze on the funding of our allies who are funding the training and the arming of so-called terrorist groups. With one hand we are fighting terror, with the other hand, we and our allies are funding and arming and training terrorist groups.

We started it, we can stop it, and we can do this now in our time.

I don't know about you, but I consider that a breath of fresh air. Several breaths!

TL;DR? She basically says this has been costly and has not made us safer; we created ISIS and we can stop them. But her own words are much richer!

Gary Johnson seems to want his opinion both ways, but maybe seems more peaceful than the two major major candidates. Once he consults with the "administrative people," though, I would not be surprised if he changes his mind:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrisA-DB57M width:500]

[1:30-3:00] Well, I would come out and say, look, we are never going to be able to defend against somebody who is willing to blow themselves up to make a statement, it is just not going to happen and we need to recognize that. But we need to try and contain this kind of thing in the Middle East; and we need to cut off funding to these groups which ultimately make this possible. And we can do that. We can do this with our brains. This is a cyberwar, if you will. I think that there is a very real Islamic terrorist threat, it's very real. But is it best addressed with our military interventions, with dropping bombs, with flying drones and killing thousands of innocent civilians? I think our military interventions are making things worse, not better; not the cause of Islamic extremism, but like I said making things worse, not better. So really it is about cutting off funding to these terrorist groups. And something that I really enjoyed being governor was being able to get the people that are involved in this, that know the most, and I am talking about now, policy people, administrative people that are in fact waging the war on terror, finding out where we're at, what we have done, what we need to do and perhaps tweaking that, because it's certainly not going to be something you turn on its head because these people have been involved.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01-2pNCZiNk width:500]

And finally, new topic:

It appears that our Bernie has said some things lately where he tries to herd us cats. With the expected results. But let's not forget this (April of this year):

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF0HmLjrPC8 width:500]

We're not a movement where I can snap my fingers and say to you or to anybody else what you should do. Because you won't listen to me and you shouldn't. You make these decisions yourself. I think if we end up losing, and I hope we do not, and if Secretary Clinton wins, it is incumbent upon her.... to reach out not only to my supporters, but to all of the American people... and not just big money interests.

Smart man, that Old Bernie! Listen to him, New Bernie!

As always, this is an open thread. Please feel free to add videos in the comments, discuss the politicians, video news, pooties, other furbutts, plans for the future, whatever rocks your world!