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AOC voted against seizing Russia oligarchs assets, do you agree with her reasoning?

Nomad4Ever

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AOC (and the rest of The Squad) voted against seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs. After receiving some criticism for her vote she put out a statement explaining her reasoning.
1651415102651.jpeg
I find this to be a very compelling argument. Obviously there is a lot of strong emotional energy to take immediate action on issues like this, but personally I find her argument to be principled and convincing.

Please discuss.
 
AOC (and the rest of The Squad) voted against seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs. After receiving some criticism for her vote she put out a statement explaining her reasoning.
View attachment 67388435
I find this to be a very compelling argument. Obviously there is a lot of strong emotional energy to take immediate action on issues like this, but personally I find her argument to be principled and convincing.

Please discuss.
She does actually have a point, but I'm undecided myself.
 
I'm no expert, but it seems like if they're foreign nationals, they don't enjoy all the same protections.

As the head of the military and U.S. diplomatic efforts, POTUS has quite a bit of authority in the area.

I'd need some more details on who these resources are being transferred to that she finds problematic.
 
it's all a bluff to see if the rich folk in Russia can get Trump's genius to stop slaughtering humans.
 
AOC (and the rest of The Squad) voted against seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs. After receiving some criticism for her vote she put out a statement explaining her reasoning.
View attachment 67388435
I find this to be a very compelling argument. Obviously there is a lot of strong emotional energy to take immediate action on issues like this, but personally I find her argument to be principled and convincing.

Please discuss.

This is extremely solid logic and I like that she is thinking of the third and fourth orders of the situation rather than just jumping along with the bandwagon.
 
AOC (and the rest of The Squad) voted against seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs. After receiving some criticism for her vote she put out a statement explaining her reasoning.
View attachment 67388435
I find this to be a very compelling argument. Obviously there is a lot of strong emotional energy to take immediate action on issues like this, but personally I find her argument to be principled and convincing.

Please discuss.

I agree with her. I am also supportive of seizing the assets of oligarchs or any foreign national under government sanction and selling them in order to generate aid for Ukraine. But there absolutely needs to be strict checks and balances in place and careful oversight of this process. Any asset forfeiture MUST be done with the oversight of the courts and the justice system, and there should be an appeals process. Civil asset forfeiture should only be allowed if an individual is under sanction by the US government, (as the case with foreign nationals,) or convicted of a serious crime in which there is a victim and a convicted perpetrator who cannot afford to make restitution. And it should happen AFTER conviction, (or sanction) not before.

If Biden's proposal is too broad, then it should be revisited to make sure that it cannot be abused.
 
AOC (and the rest of The Squad) voted against seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs. After receiving some criticism for her vote she put out a statement explaining her reasoning.
View attachment 67388435
I find this to be a very compelling argument. Obviously there is a lot of strong emotional energy to take immediate action on issues like this, but personally I find her argument to be principled and convincing.

Please discuss.
I agree with her reasoning and I'm happy that she is actually applying reason to this issue.

Now...if she would only do this with EVERY issue...

1651417786970.jpeg
 
AOC (and the rest of The Squad) voted against seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs. After receiving some criticism for her vote she put out a statement explaining her reasoning.
View attachment 67388435
I find this to be a very compelling argument. Obviously there is a lot of strong emotional energy to take immediate action on issues like this, but personally I find her argument to be principled and convincing.

Please discuss.
It's a good argument.
 
I'm no expert, but it seems like if they're foreign nationals, they don't enjoy all the same protections.

As the head of the military and U.S. diplomatic efforts, POTUS has quite a bit of authority in the area.

I'd need some more details on who these resources are being transferred to that she finds problematic.
What we see is that it's too easy to use facile rhetoric to justify theft. While Russia is obviously the aggressor and in the wrong, it took very little effort for them to justify stealing Ukrainian land, resources, private property, and, yes, people. And all they had to say to make themselves okay with committing massive war crimes is that Ukraine isn't a real country.

If oligarchs are criminals (and I believe they are), then it shouldn't be difficult to make an argument for seizing their assets in due process. And why is this important? Well, as you say, they're foreign nationals and aren't subject to same kinds of Constitutional protections we are. But...our credibility in foreign affairs is critical, and if we seize another country's assets then it must be seen that we are doing so fairly and legally. Is frustrating and annoying and infuriating that we should have to jump through legal hurdles while Russia gets to flaunt every legal, ethical and moral standard there is? Of course, but there should always be a rigorous standard for where to apply our power. It should be hard to prove guilt in court here, and it should be hard to justify war and seizing other countries' private property. That's what being the good guy means.

It's easy to agree with the principle of asset forfeiture when the DEA is taking Pablo Escobar's stuff. But we've seen how that civil asset forfeiture was used elsewhere, and it's not good.
 
Last edited:
AOC (and the rest of The Squad) voted against seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs. After receiving some criticism for her vote she put out a statement explaining her reasoning.
View attachment 67388435
I find this to be a very compelling argument. Obviously there is a lot of strong emotional energy to take immediate action on issues like this, but personally I find her argument to be principled and convincing.

Please discuss.
She is correct. People lack actual consistency in their principles and ideology if the target is someone/thing/group they don't like.
 
I think she's mistaken about that. My understanding is that the bill authorizes two things:

1. Seizing assets of Russian oligarchs.
2. Using money from the sale of these assets to fund Ukraine reconstruction.

However, the step that she's worried about (i.e. selling the assets off without due process) does not seem to be part of the bill, as far as I can tell. So I think that would still require due process. The only immediate effects would be that Biden could seize the assets temporarily, but the assets would still belong to the oligarch until the case worked its way through the courts.

But it's possible I'm wrong about that.
 
AOC (and the rest of The Squad) voted against seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs. After receiving some criticism for her vote she put out a statement explaining her reasoning.
View attachment 67388435
I find this to be a very compelling argument. Obviously there is a lot of strong emotional energy to take immediate action on issues like this, but personally I find her argument to be principled and convincing.

Please discuss.

THAT PART of her argument WAS indeed very compelling however it was not her entire argument.
She and the rest of her "squad" have from time to time also introduced a raft of arguments about "NATO expansion" being the cause OF Putin's invasion, thus she is channeling a kind of "Max Blumenthal/Frank-Walter Steinmeier/Voldemort/anti-imperialist" argument to left-splain why Russia is invading Ukraine.

Too many on the left have swallowed Putin's propaganda and he has played the Far Left and alt-Left to the point where they're almost echoing Putin's exact speeches verbatim, and while "The Squad" stopped short of adopting Putin's label of Ukrainians as "nazis", that Russian boilerplate needs no introduction on the alt-Left.

I'm still looking for the MILLIONS OF NAZIS in Ukraine and so far I just see a bunch of young and strong knuckleheads who
were probably impressed by the Hugo Boss uniforms and the scary looking tattoos.

We have more actual card carrying Nazis in Anaheim California than four hundred Azov battalions put together.
Here, in OUR military, they seem a lot more serious about playing Nazi. The Pentagon had to fight like hell to force out the hardcore ones who are all tatted up and who were members of clandestine paramilitary militias
prior to joining up for Uncle Sam.
But I could be wrong, perhaps the Azov wing of Ukraine's military is indeed rife with a few thousand misguided knuckleheads who have yet to get the memo.

But they don't look like twenty year old Ukrainian college coeds or eighty year old grandmothers, which is what's littering the streets of Bucha today,
and not a single Nazi tat on any of them so far.

AOC and her squad seemed to have missed the point on Putin and while she's not a Tulsi Gabbard or a Jill Stein, I bet she can see them both from where she stands.
And it has broken my admiration for her big time.
 
What we see is that it's too easy to use facile rhetoric to justify theft. While Russia is obviously the aggressor and in the wrong, it took very little effort for them to justify stealing Ukrainian land, resources, private property, and, yes, people. And all they had to say to make themselves okay with committing massive war crimes is that Ukraine isn't a real country.

If oligarchs are criminals (and I believe they are), then it shouldn't be difficult to make an argument for seizing their assets in due process. And why is this important? Well, as you say, they're foreign nationals and aren't subject to same kinds of Constitutional protections we are. But...our credibility in foreign affairs is critical, and if we seize another country's assets then it must be seen that we are doing so fairly and legally. Is frustrating and annoying and infuriating that we should have to jump through legal hurdles while Russia gets to flaunt every legal, ethical and moral standard there is? Of course, but there should always be a rigorous standard for where to apply our power. It should be hard to prove guilt in court here, and it should be hard to justify war and seizing other countries' private property. That's what being the good guy means.

It's easy to agree with the principle of asset forfeiture when the DEA is taking Pablo Escobar's stuff. But we've seen how that civil asset forfeiture was used elsewhere, and it's not good.

I'd like to point out that Trump almost IMMEDIATELY reversed Obama's intended protections AGAINST civil asset forfeiture.

Reversed a ban on civil forfeiture. Law enforcement officials are now once again able to seize assets from suspects who haven’t been convicted of any crime.
 
What we see is that it's too easy to use facile rhetoric to justify theft. While Russia is obviously the aggressor and in the wrong, it took very little effort for them to justify stealing Ukrainian land, resources, private property, and, yes, people. And all they had to say to make themselves okay with committing massive war crimes is that Ukraine isn't a real country.

If oligarchs are criminals (and I believe they are), then it shouldn't be difficult to make an argument for seizing their assets in due process. And why is this important? Well, as you say, they're foreign nationals and aren't subject to same kinds of Constitutional protections we are. But...our credibility in foreign affairs is critical, and if we seize another country's assets then it must be seen that we are doing so fairly and legally rather than impulsively. Is frustrating and annoying and infuriating that we should have to jump through legal hurdles while Russia gets to flaunt every legal, ethical and moral standard there is? Of course, but there should always be a rigorous standard for where to apply our power. It should be hard to prove guilt in court here, and it should be hard to justify war and seizing other countries' private property. That's what being the good guy means.

It's easy to agree with the principle of asset forfeiture when the DEA is taking Pablo Escobar's stuff. But we've seen how that civil asset forfeiture was used elsewhere, and it's not good.

This may seem like a nitpicky point, but I'd like to edit my post to include the bolded.
 
Unfortunately AOC's very mild position on one part of war sanctions is what passes for progressive politics.




I did a quick search and the first website I checked out has a halfway decent progressive position.

Quoting:

Not one of these three members of Congress states categorical opposition to U.S. military action in Ukraine. And what they do say is dangerous: they’re calling for the United States to wage economic warfare. Support for sanctions ... sets up a political justification for military intervention ...
...
At this point, there should be no illusions that AOC, Cori Bush, or Jamaal Bowman are even remotely part of the anti-imperialist movement. They have made this clear time after time. AOC went along with bipartisan attempts during the Trump administration to back a coup in Venezuela. She and Bowman voted “present” in a move to give $1 billion to Israel, and later Bowman went on a tour of the apartheid state. Cori Bush is showing us her own imperialist tendencies.
...
At this point, there should be no illusions that AOC, Cori Bush, or Jamaal Bowman are even remotely part of the anti-imperialist movement. They have made this clear time after time. AOC went along with bipartisan attempts during the Trump administration to back a coup in Venezuela. She and Bowman voted “present” in a move to give $1 billion to Israel, and later Bowman went on a tour of the apartheid state. Cori Bush is showing us her own imperialist tendencies.
...

No War!

No sanctions!

Opposition to war must take place in the streets!


End quoting.


Unfortunately there's no stopping the stupid US war machine.


 
Unfortunately AOC's very mild position on one part of war sanctions is what passes for progressive politics.




I did a quick search and the first website I checked out has a halfway decent progressive position.

Quoting:

Not one of these three members of Congress states categorical opposition to U.S. military action in Ukraine. And what they do say is dangerous: they’re calling for the United States to wage economic warfare. Support for sanctions ... sets up a political justification for military intervention ...
...
At this point, there should be no illusions that AOC, Cori Bush, or Jamaal Bowman are even remotely part of the anti-imperialist movement. They have made this clear time after time. AOC went along with bipartisan attempts during the Trump administration to back a coup in Venezuela. She and Bowman voted “present” in a move to give $1 billion to Israel, and later Bowman went on a tour of the apartheid state. Cori Bush is showing us her own imperialist tendencies.
...
At this point, there should be no illusions that AOC, Cori Bush, or Jamaal Bowman are even remotely part of the anti-imperialist movement. They have made this clear time after time. AOC went along with bipartisan attempts during the Trump administration to back a coup in Venezuela. She and Bowman voted “present” in a move to give $1 billion to Israel, and later Bowman went on a tour of the apartheid state. Cori Bush is showing us her own imperialist tendencies.
...

No War!

No sanctions!

Opposition to war must take place in the streets!


End quoting.


Unfortunately there's no stopping the stupid US war machine.


Condemning “every call for US intervention, of any sort” is dumb. The US is not going to retreat into isolationism any time soon, and it’s important to be able to weigh each case on its merits instead of making knee jerk decisions.

The US certainly shouldn’t be directly intervening—I’m vehemently opposed to a “no-fly zone” or anything else that would drag us into a thermonuclear exchange— but arguing that one can’t be anti war if they don’t reject the idea of the US being involved in the world is silly.
 
Unfortunately AOC's very mild position on one part of war sanctions is what passes for progressive politics.




I did a quick search and the first website I checked out has a halfway decent progressive position.

Quoting:

Not one of these three members of Congress states categorical opposition to U.S. military action in Ukraine. And what they do say is dangerous: they’re calling for the United States to wage economic warfare. Support for sanctions ... sets up a political justification for military intervention ...
...
At this point, there should be no illusions that AOC, Cori Bush, or Jamaal Bowman are even remotely part of the anti-imperialist movement. They have made this clear time after time. AOC went along with bipartisan attempts during the Trump administration to back a coup in Venezuela. She and Bowman voted “present” in a move to give $1 billion to Israel, and later Bowman went on a tour of the apartheid state. Cori Bush is showing us her own imperialist tendencies.
...
At this point, there should be no illusions that AOC, Cori Bush, or Jamaal Bowman are even remotely part of the anti-imperialist movement. They have made this clear time after time. AOC went along with bipartisan attempts during the Trump administration to back a coup in Venezuela. She and Bowman voted “present” in a move to give $1 billion to Israel, and later Bowman went on a tour of the apartheid state. Cori Bush is showing us her own imperialist tendencies.
...

No War!

No sanctions!

Opposition to war must take place in the streets!


End quoting.


Unfortunately there's no stopping the stupid US war machine.


I hate this this man. AOC, The Squad, and Bernie are the closest thing our government has to having leftist in power. Should we criticize them? Sure. But there as absolutely no value in condemning them for not meeting your ridiculous definition of what it means to be progressive enough. This is not constructive in any way and "criticism" like this doesn't do anything to further anti-imperialism.
 
Condemning “every call for US intervention, of any sort” is dumb.

No, it's not- not in the least. What's unwise is continuing barbarism and ignoring environmentalism, which is what any and all militarism does.

The US is not going to retreat into isolationism any time soon, and it’s important to be able to weigh each case on its merits instead of making knee jerk decisions.

Of course the dominant global military and economic force is going to keep their knees on necks.

The US certainly shouldn’t be directly intervening—I’m vehemently opposed to a “no-fly zone” or anything else that would drag us into a thermonuclear exchange— but arguing that one can’t be anti war if they don’t reject the idea of the US being involved in the world is silly.

The US escalation of the Cold War led humanity here.
 
I hate this this man. AOC, The Squad, and Bernie are the closest thing our government has to having leftist in power. Should we criticize them? Sure. But there as absolutely no value in condemning them for not meeting your ridiculous definition of what it means to be progressive enough. This is not constructive in any way and "criticism" like this doesn't do anything to further anti-imperialism.

Please give some details of what you mean by the text I highlighted. What are your points?
 
AOC is the enemy within. She should be arrested, tried, and imprisoned for 30 years. This THING is destroying the USA. She hates it so much she chooses to stay.
 
I hate this this man. AOC, The Squad, and Bernie are the closest thing our government has to having leftist in power. Should we criticize them? Sure. But there as absolutely no value in condemning them for not meeting your ridiculous definition of what it means to be progressive enough. This is not constructive in any way and "criticism" like this doesn't do anything to further anti-imperialism.

You'd think they wouldn't be so anal with the purity tests considering one of their idols (Jimmy Dore) runs interference in defense of Tulsi's anti-M4A stance.
 
No, it's not- not in the least. What's unwise is continuing barbarism and ignoring environmentalism, which is what any and all militarism does.



Of course the dominant global military and economic force is going to keep their knees on necks.



The US escalation of the Cold War led humanity here.
Yes, it is. Let’s take Bosnia as an example. Under your argument, the “anti war” movement would have to oppose the US helping stop a genocide.

Stopping a genocide is not “keeping a knee” on anyone’s neck.

And yet we are here, and so we have to face the consequences of that.
 
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