[marxmail] There’s No “Progressive Foreign Policy” Without a Reckoning for Dems Who Supported Genocide

>
> Before Democrats can articulate a more humane foreign policy, they need to
>> reckon with the mortal sin of the genocide in Gaza.
>> excerpt - Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's high profile trip to the
>> Munich Security Conference earlier this month sprouted 1,000 takes
>> <https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/aoc-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-jd-vance-democrat-republican-fear-62w2qk0zx?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqel5qBq8_7RapJkRggvxhZIqIL3UR3h0zCnIHNAw31-jAF4xS7yl9f-M9lk0js%3D&gaa_ts=699c62a6&gaa_sig=pyC0WnQsnbxCqgT656YwCZQCQ2bXvFFXpuvNHtQ_4s4In0m32UiZEz4h6vjX4O07Y1Yniqj4ZNo8YI9jR46jcg%3D%3D>
>> , counter takes <https://x.com/mehdirhasan/status/2023453655802802534>,
>> editorials
>> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/02/16/cortez-munich-class/>
>> , op-eds
>> <https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/aocs-munich-stumble-is-a-warning-to-the-left.html>,
>> and analyses
>> <https://www.ms.now/news/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-populist-message-global-politics-national-2028>
>>  from the right, the center, and the left. Ocasio-Cortez, along with her
>> new foreign policy adviser Matt Duss, attempted to paint a vision for a “progressive
>> foreign policy
>> <https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5740934-ocasio-cortez-foreign-policy/>”
>> that would embrace
>> <https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/13/politics/munich-2028-democrats-aoc-newsom>
>>  “working class-centered politics” to “stave off the scourges of
>> authoritarianism.”
>>
>> It’s a perfectly sensible, and potentially appealing, narrative that
>> speaks to a real truth: There is little doubt rising inequality and decades
>> of neoliberal policy have fueled the rise of the far right. But it was
>> nevertheless jarring to watch an American Democratic politician immediately
>> pivot to a vision of the future where a progressive U.S. president could
>> usher in an era of consistently applied Liberal Rules Based Order
>> <https://theintercept.com/2026/01/05/trump-venezuela-war/> *without
>> reckoning with their own party’s role in supporting a genocide for 15
>> months. Aiding and abetting a genocide makes you a war criminal*, and
>> progressive Democrats should, in principle, have no issues explicitly
>> condemning war criminals. Genocide is a central moral transgression that
>> needs to be faced head-on, not just referenced opaquely, or in passing, or
>> as an abstraction we need to avoid in the future. Its culprits within the
>> party need to be called out by name and admonished before anyone can move
>> on to this newer, kinder version of the Liberal Rules Based Order.
>>
>> But so far, there’s been no discussion or plan from progressives in
>> Congress to lay out *what accountability would look like for Biden
>> officials*, namely Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Director of Policy
>> Planning Jon Finer, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and the
>> president himself. These officials, among others, not only armed and funded
>> genocide, but worked to cover it up
>> <https://www.reuters.com/world/early-warning-apocalyptic-wasteland-gaza-blocked-by-us-envoys-israel-2026-01-30/>
>> , lied to Congress
>> <https://www.propublica.org/article/gaza-palestine-israel-blocked-humanitarian-aid-blinken> about
>> it, and repeatedly misled the public
>> <https://internationalpolicy.org/publications/the-biden-administrations-false-history-of-ceasefire-negotiations/>
>> .
>>
>> "US officials should absolutely be held accountable for their role in
>> the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” Tlaib said in a statement to The
>> Intercept. “Genocide is the crime of crimes. It is not something you can
>> commit or enable and just move on from without facing justice. This is true
>> for Biden administration officials and Trump administration officials
>> alike. *The evidence is clear that high-level Biden officials, such as
>> Secretary of State Blinken, knew exactly what was happening in Gaza,
>> silenced internal reports of war crimes and forced starvation, and
>> proceeded to lie to the American people and continue to arm, fund, and
>> enable mass atrocities.”*
>>
>> The reason why it matters, aside from the intrinsic virtue of justice, is
>> that the assumption that those covering up, arming, and funding a genocide
>> could do so, half-heartedly mumble some excuse, and everything would
>> eventually go back to Business As Usual in the coming years was the exact
>> dynamic they were counting on when they helped Israel carry out its genocide
>> *.* They knew full well this dynamic would play out, as it did for
>> Vietnam
>> <https://theintercept.com/2025/12/27/pete-hegseth-mark-kelly-investigation-vietnam/>,
>> post-9/11 CIA torture, and Iraq before it
>> <https://theintercept.com/2023/03/15/iraq-war-where-are-they-now/>.
>> Those who unleashed untold horrors, mass death, starvation, and wiped out
>> entire families could — in the event it became a minor PR headache— feign
>> powerlessness, insist they were actually changing things from the inside or
>> index it as a “mistake,” then eventually ease their way back into the
>> liberal foreign policy establishment.
>>
>> This plan appears to be working. as key supporters of the genocide and
>> its cover-up are filling elite jobs without any meaningful pushback. Finer
>> and Sullivan started a chummy podcast for Vox
>> <https://www.voxmedia.com/2025/11/4/24481223/jake-sullivan-and-jon-finer-launch-new-weekly-podcast-the-long-game-in-partnership-with-vox-media/> and
>> the latter has joined the left-leaning
>> <https://www.fp4america.org/jake-sullivan/> Foreign Policy for America
>> as well as Harvard Kennedy School. Blinken has joined
>> <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/blinken-war-crimes/> the board of
>> directors of the influential liberal think tank Center for American
>> Progress, with Finer joining him there as a distinguished senior fellow
>> <https://www.americanprogress.org/press/release-jon-finer-to-join-cap-as-distinguished-senior-fellow/>.
>> *No harm, no foul; everything is going back to business as usual.*
>>
>> *The moral minimum would be to support war crime prosecutions*, as Tlaib
>> explicitly does, *and refer top Biden officials to the International
>> Criminal Court for prosecution*. The optical minimum — the bottom of the
>> barrel, the floor under the floor of the barrel — is the wholesale
>> rejection of the genocide’s top architects from polite society, to declare
>> that they ought to have no role in any future Democratic Party event,
>> administration, consultancy, or top think tank.
>>
>> This, of course, is in no way a sufficient punishment, but it’s the bare
>> minimum for anyone who believes Gaza is a genocide. Any embrace of Blinken,
>> Finer, Sullivan, or Biden in these circles is to desecrate and belittle the
>> very concept of genocide. It is to mock the intelligence of their
>> supporters and the suffering of Palestinians in equal measure.
>>
>> Under the banner of “unity,” many will insist that rejecting, much less
>> demanding prosecutions of, Biden officials is simply not possible. *We’d
>> like to in the abstract*, they may insist, *but Savvy Pragmatism has
>> once again forced us to “bridge the divide” and unite the left and liberals*.
>> This was, albeit in the “bipartisan” context, the logic former President
>> Barack Obama used *when he **refused to prosecute any Bush
>> administration war criminals for their widespread use of torture*
>> <https://theintercept.com/2019/12/04/george-bush-barack-obama-and-the-cia-torture-cover-up/>
>> *.* “Look forward, not back,” Obama infamously insisted
>> <https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2009/08/white_house_obama_looks_ahead.html> in
>> 2009 under the auspices of “unity
>> <https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aide-obama-wont-prosecute-bush-officials/>”
>> and “healing <https://www.wbur.org/news/2011/09/11/obama-911-anniversary>
>> .”
>>
>> This culture of not looking backward helped create the circumstances
>> under which the genocide in Gaza could foment. Biden officials could do
>> whatever they wanted to do, regardless of the depravity and cruelty,
>> knowing full well this cycle of impunity would be fiercely backstopped by
>> elites in both parties.
>>
>
>
>> “Healing” without accountability is simply another word for cover-up.
>> Biden officials knew this, Trump officials currently know this, and the
>> next administration that seeks to dispossess, starve, and kill Palestinians
>> will no doubt know it too. If progressives in Congress can’t break this
>> cycle of elite impunity, who will? If they can’t draw a line in the sand,
>> name names within their own party, and have a principled opposition to
>> genocide and its authors, what is the point of having a left wing of the
>> Democrats at all? There will always be some existential election just
>> around the corner to deploy as pretext to discipline the left wing into
>> complying and accepting the unacceptable. Years out from 2028, no such
>> excuse exists now. Biden and his officials remain either obscure or
>> unpopular.
>>
>
>
>> Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and Khanna not replying to requests for comment
>> on this topic is not, of course, evidence they have no plans to address the
>> matter of accountability at some further date. But at some point in the
>> near future, it’s an issue they will have to confront. Accusations of
>> genocide carry certain obligations and implications. It’s not an abstract
>> moral claim or a box to be checked; it’s a duty to stand in clear
>> opposition to the architects of genocide. If those attempting to articulate
>> a progressive foreign policy cannot do this, if they can’t name names and
>> commit to — at the very least — purging Biden officials from the party and
>> liberal spaces, then how can any progressive vision for foreign policy be
>> seen as remotely credible?
>> *https://theintercept.com/2026/02/25/democrats-gaza-genocide-accountability/
>> <https://theintercept.com/2026/02/25/democrats-gaza-genocide-accountability/>*
>>
>>
>>


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