Whatever you do ... don't mention the war?

Well no, of course we should mention it.  An article appears in today's Guardian under the headline 

Bernie Sanders' focus on Clinton's Iraq war vote isn't harping - it's necessary

It's written by Trevor Timm and, by and large, I agree with his central argument that the war in Iraq and the politics surrounding the decisions in the USA, the UK and elsewhere remain important matters of political debate and scrutiny today. But who voted which way and why is of less importance - except in the realms of history and election rhetoric in the current USA election campaigns (Democrat and Republican) - than establishing a clear framework to ensure we can deal with the war's legacy peacefully and avoid the political folly of repeating the mistakes of 2002 / 2003.

Hubris - MSNBC documentary from Rachel Maddow, 2013

All of which is by way of my apology for what follows. Mr Angry of Gilmore has been hitting the keyboard again in response to the article and some of the comments made by other readers. Here is what I wrote. 

I agree that the Iraq War is a legitimate matter to be raised in political debate today (like millions of others I marched to oppose the war because there were no WMD and the US and British governments at that time lied to their citizens). I agree too with your observations that we can trace the origins of ISIS to the chaos that war unleashed.

I'm not overly impressed, however, by Bernie Sanders reductionist rhetoric, which you quote in the article,

I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq.

The politically easy and (I think) reasonable answer to BS comment is that 'we were all lied to / if I knew then what I know now, etc'. Thousands of politicians the world over voted the same way as HRC. I believe they were wrong to do so. But that does not necessarily make them unfit to govern 10 years and more later. 

The questions BS and voters ought to be addressing is this: given the horrendous mistakes and deceit (by some people in government at the time) what foreign policy lessons have they learned, how will they govern to resist the mindless nihilism of ISIS, keep citizens safe and build a peaceful future? 

But here's the thing. Bernie has to answer those questions persuasively, just as much as HRC needs to, because he wants to be President as much as she does. We need to know in detail what both HRC and BS would do with their foreign policies because we certainly know what dangerous fools like Donald Drumpf and Ted Cruz would try to do. None of us wants to live (and maybe die) in the world they'd want to bomb back to the stone age.