by MITCHEL COHEN

Green Party 2020 candidates Howie Hawkins (President) and Angela Walker (Vice President)

As one of those who is trying to get the Green Party to switch its tactics and electoral strategy, I would appreciate it if Ajamu Baraka and others would at least address the arguments I and others are making …

… which has nothing to do with any expectations of Biden and the neo-liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

My ONLY points in recommending that Greens (and everyone else) vote for Biden in swing states are:

Trump is bolstering right-wing white supremacists (are there any other kind?), firing them up, egging them on to be his stormtroopers and death squads, and has appointed a US Attorney General that defends them and attacks antifascists instead.

Regardless of everything else about the Democrats, I do not think that Biden would do the same — do you? — and it makes a world of difference as to whether we are trying to organize under those conditions in a Trump regime vs. a Biden one.

The rhetoric alone makes a huge difference, but it’s not only about rhetoric.

In terms of domestic policy it ALSO makes a difference if you are a woman (reproductive rights), are gay-trans-bi-queer, are senior (a further raid on social security), and of course if you are Black.

Those are not insignificant differences, and to minimize them or not refer to them is dissembling. It means we cannot even discuss strategy for the Green Party until the above is recognized and acknowledged.

Note again: I think Biden will be terrible on foreign policy, although strangely he might support Cuba, as opening to Cuba was part of the Obama/Biden legacy. But when it comes to everywhere else, look out! …. Same as with Trump, despite what Baraka argues in Trump’s defense that Trump is serious about ending the “endless wars”. He gives a single example of a “peace process” towards Afghanistan, which is still yet to occur after 3 years. As of 16 months ago, Trump’s drone attacks, which Baraka ignores, far exceeded even Obama’s in 4 years:

According to a 2018 report in The Daily Beast, Obama launched 186 drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan during his first two years in office. In Trump’s first two years, he launched 238.

The Trump administration has carried out 176 strikes in Yemen in just two years, compared with 154 there during all eight years of Obama’s tenure, according to a count by The Associated Press and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Experts also say drone strikes under President Trump have surged in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

And, as was the case during Obama’s presidency, these strikes have resulted in untold numbers of civilian casualties. According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, U.S. drone strikes in Afghanistan killed more than 150 civilians in the first nine months of 2018.

Amnesty International reports drones have killed at least 14 civilians in Somalia since 2017.

As of January of this year, U.S. drone strikes fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria have killed at least 1,257 civilians, according to the Pentagon, and a monitoring group, Airwars, estimates the number to be as great as 7,500.

That you might not be aware of what should be a startling and deeply troubling escalation in unaccountable remote-control warfare by the U.S. is both by design and default.

For one, the Obama administration paved the way for popularizing and normalizing drone wars, which also included the extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens, first by hiding it, then by begrudgingly acknowledging it, and then by pretending to meaningfully constrain it.

Obama eventually put in place arcane requirements to issue public reports on civilian death tolls (but just in certain military theaters), to limit targets to high-level militants (again, in certain battlefields), and require interagency approval (also only for certain targets).

Trump has peeled back all of those requirements because, well, he can. We now know more than we did about U.S. drone wars when Obama first took office, but less than when he left.

        – S. E. Cupp Chicago Sun-Times  May 8, 2019

So if we are going to discuss Green Party strategy, at least understand what I and others are saying, acknowledge you hear it, and repeat it back accurately.

Stopping fascists from having their hands on executive power is the most important point in this election.

And, yes, of course we’ll have to do a lot more afterwards regardless of who wins. Frankly, the Green Party should be doing it now, but as a Party it is invisible.