about Democrats "starting wars"
* WWII: sure seems like Germany started this one in 1939 by invading Poland. They were bombing London by 1940. Of course, you could say Japan started WWII when they invaded China in 1937. And, 4 years later they attacked the US by bombing the shit out of the Navy and Air Force at Pearl Harbor. FDR was president and a democrat, but yeah, saying a "Democrat started WW2" is pretty fucking ridiculous
* Korean War: North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950 when Truman, a Democrat was president. The US had a protection treaty with South Korea, but this was obviously a proxy war with the USSR. Still, it was North Korea that started that war. Neither South Korea or the US invaded North Korea
* Vietnam: this is a little more complex. The first American Military advisors were sent to Vietnam by Truman in 1950, mostly as an ancillary action to the Korean War and a response to the "Domino Theory". The number of advisors escalated sharply under Eisenhower, an R, after France abandoned the war there in 1954. Kennedy, a D, Sent even more advisors. Then it was Johnson, a D, who sent the first combat troops in 1965; that was 3,500 troops and in about 3 years that number had escalated to over half a million. Nixon, and R, campaigned on 'peace with honor' and about half of all US combat deaths occurred while Nixon and Kissinger were looking for some honorable way out. Finally, the US left in a most dishonorable way. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a dishonest bunch of bullshit almost as filled with lies as the justification for the Iraq war passed the Senate in 1964 and every R in the senate voted in favor. Only 2 senators, both D's, and one of them Oregon's Wayne Morse voted against the resolution. And Nixon was the president who went hog wild in trying to bomb the North into the stone age, and even expanded the bombing to Cambodia
so yeah, I guess you could say D's were primary in ginning up that war, but they had plenty of help from the R's. And if Nixon hadn't been such a slimy political shit, the number of body bags could have been cut in half
* Afghanistan: ok, 9-11, twin towers. Irony is not a single hijacker was an Afghan. 15 of the 19 were Saudi, but of course we weren't going to attack Saudi Arabia. They were trained by al-Qaeda in camps in Afghanistan and that was the justification for that war. You can say al-Qaeda started that war, but the reality is there were several decades of policies stoking Arab hatred also to blame.
* Iraq: bullshit war started with bullshit and lies by an R administration.
