Elizabeth Warren Wants Green Bombs, not a Green New Deal

05 Jun 2019

Warren prides herself in fighting for a kinder capitalism but has no problem with a nasty, murderous imperialism.

“Warren is decidedly to the right of Bernie Sanders on the issue of war and peace.”

The Green New Deal has found little support among establishment Democratic Party members of Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the comprehensive policy a “list of aspirations” that could never be considered all at once. Senate Democrats mostly abstained from the 57-0 Senate vote against the Green New Deal in March, calling the gesture a Republican “stunt.” Yet this “stunt” revealed that the corporate Democratic Party is not very interested in the Green New Deal even though it is supported by over eighty percent of voters in both political parties. In this stage of capitalism, the Democrat side of the two-party duopoly is just as enthusiastic a patron in the endless regime of austerity as its Republican counterpart.

Elizabeth Warren has been receiving more attention from the Democratic Party establishment of late. Warren has attempted to make up for her woeful confrontation with Trump around her proclaimed indigenous identity by releasing a flurry of policy proposals on issues such as maternal mortality and student loan forgiveness. While Elizabeth Warren has voiced “strong support” for the Green New Deal, she recently tweeted a strange proposal that deviates from its principles. In mid-May, Warren announced that she would be introducing the Defense Climate Resiliency and Readiness Act to help the military become more “energy efficient.” As she stated on Twitter, “Climate change is real, it’s worsening by the day, and it’s undermining our military readiness. More and more, accomplishing the mission depends on our ability to continue operations in the face of floods, drought, wildfires, desertification, and extreme cold.”

“The corporate Democratic Party is not very interested in the Green New Deal even though it is supported by over eighty percent of voters.”

Elizabeth Warren believes that strengthening the “effectiveness” of the U.S. military is consistent with the Green New Deal. Her bill doesn’t demand that the U.S. military be reduced in size or scale.Nor does it mention that the U.S. military is the world’s largest polluter and user of oil and fossil fuels. Instead of turning the Green New Deal into concrete policy, Warren has placed her attention on renovating the one thousand U.S. military bases that exist domestically and abroad. The so-called “policy wonk” of the 2020 elections appears to be more concerned with creating “green” bombs than a “green economy.”

The U.S. drops a bomb on another nation every twelve minutes. It is no wonder that U.S. military, which serves as the armed body of the state responsible for protecting the interests of Wall Street, fossil fuel corporations, military contractors, and monopolies of all kinds, is treated as a trophy by all sections of the U.S. political class. The U.S. military embodies American exceptionalism claiming to spread democracy and freedom to lands near and far. Holidays such as Memorial Day and Veterans Day are designed to remind Americans of all races and classes that the U.S. is exceptional because of its large military footprint. Instead of seeing this footprint as bombs, sanctions, or deadly raids, Democrat and Republican politicians alike believe that the U.S. military permanently signifies American greatness.

“Her bill doesn’t demand that the U.S. military be reduced in size or scale.”

The U.S. military state has no real opponents in the 2020 election. For the last four years, Bernie Sanders has been considered by millions as the most left-wing politician in two-party duopoly. Since Sanders entered the mainstream, Black Agenda Report has warned its readers that the self-styled “democratic socialist” is an imperialist pig, which is evidenced by his history of supporting the U.S. drone program, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the U.S.-backed overthrow of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad, to name just a few instances. Still, Sanders finds himself attacked by the Democrats for being too progressive on the issue of war and peace. Neocon and MSNBC darling William Kristol, leader of the #NeverSanders movement in the ruling class, has gone so far as to challenge Sanders to a debate on foreign policy for the sole purpose of shaming the Vermont Senator for voting against the invasion of Iraq, protesting U.S. support for the contras in Central America in the 1980s, and opposing the U.S. war in Vietnam.

Warren is decidedly to the right of Bernie Sanders on the issue of war and peace. Warren supports U.S. sanctions against Venezuela. Sanctions are estimated to have killed over 40,000 Venezuelans between the years of 2017 to 2018 alone. When Trump agreed to negotiate directly with Kim Jong-un in Singapore, Warren called for a more aggressive posture toward the DPRK. The Massachusetts Senator proclaimed that Israel possessed the “right to defend itself” during its invasion of Gaza in 2014. Israel’s Operation Protective Edge killed thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of children. Warren prides herself in fighting for a kinder capitalism but has no problem with a nasty, murderous imperialism.

“Strengthening the U.S. military is wholly incompatible with a Green New Deal.”

Warren’s proposal for a greener military only adds to her hawkish record. In the proposal, she admits that hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts are given to private corporations such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to conduct war abroad. The admission is just a fact of life for Warren rather than a problem to be resolved. In fact, Warren wants to strengthen the U.S. military’s efficiency so it can continue to wreak havoc on the planet. She pretends not to know that strengthening the U.S. military is wholly incompatible with a Green New Deal, which would require a massive redistribution of resources from the military toward the needs of poor and working-class communities around the world.

The rich use election seasons to kill policies such as the Green New Deal. The Democratic Party is desperate to take the reins from the Republicans but understands that it cannot govern like the Republicans. It is not the White Man’s Party and has not been since mid-20thcentury. However, the capitalists and militarists that huddled under Hillary Clinton’s big, nasty tent in 2016 remain comfortably in the bosom of the DNC. This election cycle has already brought forth a myriad of tactics that establishment Democrats hope will dampen the expectations of the people and satisfy their donors. Capital has introduced the likes of Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, Joe Biden and a host of others to suffocate Bernie Sanders on the debate stage and in the polls. The DNC hopes to push the primary to a second round of voting at the convention, thus giving the superdelegates full power to determine the nomination.

“Establishment Democrats hope they can dampen the expectations of the people and satisfy their donors.”

Warren is neither progressive enough for the Sandernista voters nor reactionary enough to garner support from the DNC. Her green bombs proposal is a desperate attempt stake out a middle path amid the chaos and crisis afflicting the Democratic Party. A “greener” military state is not the kind of “new deal” that workers and poor people, especially Black America, are looking for. The rise of Sanders and the popularity of policies such as the Green New Deal indicate that living wage employment, healthcare for all, and relief from student and other forms of parasitic debt top the list of changes that most of the constituents in the Democratic Party want to see. Warren won’t deliver on this basic economic program in her campaign and Sanders cannot be trusted to wage a struggle against his own party once its corporate overlords sabotage his presidential aspirations for a second time. White supremacy, endless war, and capitalist austerity cannot be resolved from within a political party that is bought and owned by the ruling class. The hope is that the political crisis engendered by the struggle between the oligarchs and Sanders,with some help from the likes of Tulsi Gabbard and even Elizabeth Warren, will lead to the splintering of the Democratic Party and more room for independent, left political forces to breath and grow.

Danny Haiphong is an activist and journalist in the New York City area. He and Roberto Sirvent are co-authors of the book entitled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News -- From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror (Skyhorse Publishing).He can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @SpiritofHo.

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