Bernie Sanders was asked "The world has seen many great
leaders in history. Can you name two leaders, one American and one foreign, who
would influence your foreign policy decisions?"
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the American leader who had
influenced him and the foreign leader was Winston Churchill.
“Winston Churchill's politics were not my politics. He was
kind of a conservative guy in many respects. But nobody can deny that as a
wartime leader, he rallied the British people when they stood virtually alone
against the Nazi juggernaut and rallied them and eventually won an
extraordinary victory.”
Churchill’s contribution to the war effort cheered by
Sanders was to help contribute to the 1943 Bengal famine, which Churchill later
callously exacerbated, leading to the fatal starvation of around 3 million
people. Churchill exported huge amounts of food from India to Britain and
various war theaters, despite being repeatedly warned that continued exhaustion
of India’s food supplies would lead to famine. Churchill's government insisted
that India continue exporting grain even as Bengal was collapsing into
starvation, shipping out 260,000 tons of rice in the fiscal year 1942-'43.
Grain imports that could have eased the devastation were diverted elsewhere, to
feed Britain and create stockpiles that could be used to feed Europeans in the
event they were liberated from Nazi rule. He declined offers of wheat from the
United States and Canada, and had Australian ships carrying wheat bypass India
and travel straight to Europe.
"I hate Indians," Churchill told his secretary of
state for India, Leopold Amery. "They are a beastly people with a beastly
religion." Amery accused Churchill of having a "Hitler-like
attitude" toward Indians, but Churchill was unmoved. Amery recorded in his
diary Churchill saying that “the starvation of anyhow under-fed Bengalis is
less serious than sturdy Greeks.” He even seemed to view the catastrophic
famine as a reasonable punishment for India's high birthrate, telling his war
cabinet that the famine was Indians' own fault for "breeding like
rabbits." Approximately 3 million Indians died in the famine.
During World War II, at the same time that he was rallying
the British public with the inspirational speeches cited by Senator Sanders,
Churchill produced a secret memorandum that made clear his desire to “drench”
German cities with poison gas so that “most of the population would be
requiring constant medical attention.” “I want the matter studied in cold blood
by sensible people and not by the particular set of psalm-singing uniformed
defeatists which one runs across,” he explained. Churchill didn’t get his wish,
but he did get to play a hand in another World War Two atrocity that would
arguably come to be most associated with his name: the carpet bombing of
Germany. Churchill’s bombing of German cities, part of the “extraordinary
victory” celebrated by Sanders, deliberately made no distinction between
combatants and civilians and killed around 400,000 civilians. Dresden has
become the most notorious instance of this, though by no means is it the only
one. As World War II drew to a close, Britain indiscriminately bombarded the
city with more than 4,500 tons of explosives, reducing the city to smoldering
rubble and ash and killing between 18-25,000 people. The bombing turned the
city streets into bubbling, molten tar and created a fiery vortex that sucked
in everything around it.
It was Churchill, more than any other politician, who pushed
for the disastrous campaign against the Bolsheviks
following the first world war. Taking a large British fleet and 1,600 men as Britain
struggled to find the money to rebuild, he attempted to restore the Russian
aristocracy to power.
In the 1920s, as the British secretary of state for war,
Churchill created the notorious "Black and Tans," in Ireland, a
paramilitary militia that he recruited to maintain British control and suppress
the Irish nationalists.
In the Middle East
“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right
to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not
admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done
to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit
that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a
higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and
taken their place.”
Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons,
suggesting they be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an
experiment". He dismissed objections as "unreasonable". "I
am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes... to
spread a lively terror"
It was Churchill, more than any other politician, who pushed
for the disastrous campaign in favour of the Whites against the Bolsheviks
following the great war. Taking a large British fleet and 1,600 men as Britain
struggled to find the money to rebuild, he attempted to restore the Russian
aristocracy to power
He claimed that the fascism of Benito Mussolini had
"rendered a service to the whole world", showing as it had "a
way to combat subversive forces" and explained that “If I had been an
Italian I am sure I should have been whole-heartedly with you in your
triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism... Italy
has provided the necessary antidote to the Russian poison. Hereafter no great
nation will be unprovided with an ultimate means of protection against the
cancerous growth of Bolshevism.”
He was also an admirer of Hitler "I have always said
that if Britain were defeated in a war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead
us back to our rightful position among nations.”
While leading the UK in the 1950s, Churchill was responsible
for other crimes. One of these was the CIA- and MI6-engineered coup in Iran,
which saw the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadeq overthrown in 1953 after
he nationalized British oil holdings in the country. Churchill had approved the
plan and later told the main agent in the plot that he “would have loved
nothing better than to have served under your command in this great venture.” This
was the same coup that Sanders denounced earlier in the debate as an example of
how the United States should not act on the world stage.
In the same decade,
Churchill also presided over the brutal suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion in
Kenya, which saw at least 11,000 killed and many thousands more tortured.
Rebels, including Obama’s grandfather, were rounded up in concentration camps
that make Abu Ghraib look like Disneyworld. Harvard historian Catherine Elkins
has described them as "Britain's gulags." Those imprisoned in the
camps were subjected to torture, including sexual violence like castration and
rape. Records show that Churchill's government was well aware of what was
happening but failed to stop it, even as it received reports of detainees being
burned alive during interrogations.
Nor should we forget it was Churchill who sent in the troops to break a coal miners strike. During the General Strike Churchill started printing the British Gazette whose sole
aim was to print lies about the strike and spread ruling class propaganda. During the General Strike, Churchill was reported to
have suggested that machine guns should be used on the striking miners.
Henry Kissinger may have too much blood on his hands to be a
friend of Sanders but Churchill’s hands are also very much drenched in blood to be a
person to admire which makes many wonder about Sanders and his knowledge of history. Churchill was a war-criminal.
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