Progressives acknowledging the fact of genocide is a good first step, and it’s useful that Ocasio-Cortez and others have done so — “I think [unconditional aid to Israel] enabled a genocide in Gaza,” she said in Munich — but it is not in and of itself sufficient. Before anyone in the party can move on to selling a post-Biden vision of human-rights-first foreign policy, they must address what accountability for the war criminals in the Biden administration — those who aided, armed, and funded genocide — should look like.
Biden went around Congress to provide arms we had clear evidence would be used in a genocide.
Just because he’s not the biggest war criminal, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be held accountable.
Not holding “our own” accountable just depresses turnout and let’s maga win
We can’t afford to put Joe fucking Biden or any other Dem politician over the entire country. We have to hold them accountable, and if they don’t want to be held accountable they can stop committing war crimes, or at least get out of office.
Like, it’s not just international law he violated, US law too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy_Law
It’s not that I don’t think everyone involved needs to be held accountable, they absolutely do, but sloppy sloganeering also hurts the cause by making it sound like we don’t know what we’re talking about. How many times has fairly reasonable gun regulation been sidelined because someone got pedantic over whether a rifle was clip fed or magazine fed.
I know, we all hate semantics, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter.
…
It’s weird I have to keep saying this in 2026:
People complaining that the Dem candidate doesn’t reflect the policy positions of Dem voters isn’t the problem, and even if they all shut up, it wouldn’t solve anything.
The problem is forcing candidates dem voters don’t want, rather than fair primaries.
We’ll have a fair primary in 2028, so there won’t be a problem.
If you truly think people talking about the candidate is worse, look at 2008 and Hillary’s campaign team literally and loudly advocating for Kerry over Obama.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_United_Means_Action
That didn’t stop Obama from flipping a shit ton of red states, because Dem voters supporting a platform means more than people saying they don’t like the platform.
Did you ever notice how criticizing the candidate is only a problem when it’s an uncharismatic candidate no one likes with a shitty platform?
Quick edit:
Bro, I love semantics…
Um… what does any of that have to do with the subject of the post though? The OP stated:
I said I don’t know that “War Criminals” is the right way to frame what they did. I do not disagree with your point that:
It’s a valid point, but I didn’t suggest not holding them accountable, I suggested being precise in how we frame what they did wrong. We devalue the term “War Crime” if we use it too loosely.
Dude, what are you even talking about? We’re talking about the (prospective) candidates. That’s what this whole conversation has been about. My point was about how to frame the way we talk about it. I never suggested they shouldn’t be thoroughly vetted by the voter and people shouldn’t be held accountable for their bad decisions. Who are you arguing with? Because it doesn’t sound like anything I said.