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JD Vance on War & Peace
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Trump said "no" when a lot of them wanted a ridiculous war
And I think that there's a big, big thing going on in American politics. It's a very interesting theme in American foreign policy, where a lot of former members of the Pentagon bureaucracy, a lot of old neoconservatives, they have a fundamental
difference with Donald Trump on the question of peace and war. I believe Donald Trump is the candidate of peace. I think the record supports that. They don't like that Donald Trump said no when a lot of them wanted to start a ridiculous war.
The entire point that I'm making about Trump's foreign policy is, this is a guy who wants to use American troops sparingly. He wants peace through strength. It's why his foreign policy was so successful during his first term. It's all the same people
who were wrong about Iraq. They were wrong about the quagmire in Afghanistan. They were wrong about Syria. They were wrong about everything. And now they're coming after Donald Trump, because he actually has a realistic and cautious foreign policy.
Source: CNN SOTU interview: 2024 Vice Presidential Veepstakes
, Oct 27, 2024
Trump deterred Iran; Biden-Harris unfroze $100B
Q: Would you support a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran?WALZ: Israel's ability to defend itself is absolutely fundamental. What we've seen out of Vice President Harris is we've seen steady leadership. Our allies see Donald Trump turn towards
Vladimir Putin, turn towards North Korea--fickleness around holding the coalitions together.
VANCE: Gov. Walz just accused Donald Trump of being an agent of chaos, Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world, and he did it by establishing
effective deterrence. People were afraid of stepping out of line. Iran, which launched [against Israel today's missile] attack, has received over $100 billion in unfrozen assets thanks to the Kamala Harris administration. What do they use that money for?
They use it to buy weapons that they're now launching against our allies and, God forbid, potentially launching against the United States as well. Donald Trump recognized that for people to fear the United States, you needed peace through strength.
Source: 2024 Vice Presidential debate: Tim Walz vs. JD Vance
, Oct 1, 2024
I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance served in the U.S. Marine Corps, and he's the first veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan to appear on a presidential ballot. But Vance isn't a hawk; in fact, he now leads a contingent of war veterans in the
Republican Party who oppose U.S. military intervention abroad. "I served my country honorably and I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to," Vance said on the Senate floor in April after the chamber passed $61 billion of new aid for Ukraine.
He essentially accused his colleagues of getting fooled, just like he was when he believed in the Iraq War. "My excuse is that I was a high school senior. What is the excuse of many people who were in this chamber or in the
House of Representatives at the time and are now singing the exact same song when it comes to Ukraine? Have we learned nothing?" he said.
Source: NPR on 2024 Veepstakes
, Jul 29, 2024
Iraq War was ill-advised years-long overseas entanglement
Vance has recently compared U.S. Ukraine involvement to the Iraq War, including in an April 23 Senate floor speech. The George W. Bush administration attacked Iraq in 2003, citing the perceived growing threat of Saddam Hussein as part of what Bush
called an "axis of evil" and hyped claims that Iraq was arming itself with "Weapons of Mass Destruction." Vance, who enlisted in the Marines out of high school that year, was later deployed to Iraq for two years. In the years after his service, he
concluded it was an ill-advised and costly years-long overseas entanglement with negative consequences."Like any self-respecting hillbilly," he had wanted to go to the Middle East to kill terrorists in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on
New York City, Vance wrote in his 2016 bestselling memoir "Hillbilly Elegy." He now sees unsettling similarities between the run-up to the Iraq War and current calls for more U.S. support to Ukraine.
Source: Cincinnati Enquirer on 2024 Veepstakes
, May 15, 2024
Oppose BDS movement to pressure Israel out of territories
Q: I support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement to pressure Israel to withdraw from occupied territories, remove the separation barrier in the West Bank, allow full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and
promote the rights of Palestinian refugees.A: Strongly Disagree
Q: The Chinese Communist Party poses serious military, cyber security, intellectual property, and global economic threats to the United States.
A: Strongly Agree
Source: American Family Association 2022 iVoterGuide
, Nov 1, 2022
Only global elites profit from endless nation-building wars
For two decades, global elites have played a trick on normal Americans: send your sons and daughters to die for nation-building wars in some far flung corner of the world, and when their utopian fantasies fail, accept millions of
refugees into middle and working class neighborhoods. This is a bad deal for Americans, a bad deal for our troops, a bad deal for the refugees, but a good deal for the elites who profit from endless war.
Source: 2021 OH Senate campaign website JDVance.com
, Oct 3, 2021
Marines in Iraq trained on respecting Muslim culture
[In college] with four years in the Marine Corps behind me, more separated me from the other students than age. During an undergraduate seminar in foreign policy, I listened as a 19-year-old classmate spouted off about the Iraq war. He explained that
those fighting the war were typically less intelligent than those (like him) who immediately went to college. It showed, he argued, in the wanton way soldiers butchered and disrespected Iraqi civilians. I thought about the never-ending training on
how to respect Iraqi culture--never show anyone the bottom of your foot, never address a woman in traditional Muslim garb without first speaking to a male relative. I thought about the security we provided for Iraqi poll workers, and how we studiously
explained the importance of their mission without ever pushing our own political views on them. And here was this [19-year-old] telling our class that we murdered people for sport. I felt an immediate drive to finish college as quickly as possible.
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p.186-7
, May 25, 2017
Page last updated: Oct 30, 2024; copyright 1999-2022 Jesse Gordon and OnTheIssues.org