For­eign pol­i­cy has always been some­thing of a sore spot for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. While less eager for war than the GOP, Democ­rats feel they have to look ​“tough” and ​“cred­i­ble” on for­eign pol­i­cy, typ­i­cal­ly done by prov­ing they’re just as ready to fight America’s sup­posed ene­mies when push comes to shove. That’s exact­ly what the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates spent much of last night’s debate doing.

It’s puzzling as to why, of all people, Sanders chose a figure with a record this bloody to cite as an influence, particularly after having denounced Kissinger so vehemently earlier in the debate.

With some impor­tant excep­tions, such as the issue of régime change, Ver­mont Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders and for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clinton’s for­eign poli­cies were large­ly on the same page, as they have been through­out the cam­paign. Sanders joined in with Clin­ton over the pre­vail­ing fear of Rus­sia, prais­ing NATO’s recent provoca­tive amass­ing of troops along Russia’s bor­der, its largest deploy­ment since the Cold War. The can­di­dates then went on to sep­a­rate­ly embrace two of history’s worst war mongers.

Clin­ton went first. After Sanders crit­i­cized her ear­li­er embrace of her pre­de­ces­sor Hen­ry Kissinger, call­ing him ​“one of the most destruc­tive sec­re­taries of state in the mod­ern his­to­ry of this coun­try,” Clin­ton dou­bled down, argu­ing that what­ev­er com­plaints one may have of Kissinger, ​“his open­ing up of Chi­na and his ongo­ing rela­tion­ships with the lead­ers of Chi­na is an incred­i­bly use­ful relationship.”

Clinton’s ear­li­er men­tion of Kissinger wasn’t just name-drop­ping. She appears to gen­uine­ly view him as a role mod­el while serv­ing as Sec­re­tary of State. In a 2014 review of his lat­est book, she called him a ​“friend.” Her praise has raised eye­brows among lib­er­als, giv­en Kissinger’s well-doc­u­ment­ed record of war crimes, includ­ing the ille­gal bomb­ing of Cam­bo­dia that killed tens of thou­sands of civil­ians and brought the geno­ci­dal Khmer Rouge to power.

In this con­text, Sanders’ avow­al that ​“Hen­ry Kissinger is not my friend” played well. It was a good moment for him, forc­ing Clin­ton to pub­licly defend Kissinger — a reviled fig­ure among old­er Democ­rats and the Left as a whole — while call­ing atten­tion to the estab­lish­ment ties he’s tried to ham­mer her on through­out the campaign.

And then he men­tioned Win­ston Churchill.

Asked by a Face­book user which for­eign leader the can­di­dates took inspi­ra­tion from when it came to for­eign pol­i­cy, Sanders cit­ed the for­mer British Prime Minister.

“He was kind of a con­ser­v­a­tive guy in many respects,” said Sanders. ​“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 is undoubt­ed­ly famed for his wartime speech­es, which have become the stuff of folk his­to­ry, and his image is vir­tu­al­ly syn­ony­mous with the fight against Hitler. But for a can­di­date denounc­ing Kissinger and his record of atroc­i­ties, Churchill is an odd choice as an ​“influ­ence,” to say the least.

Where to start? Churchill’s con­tri­bu­tion to the war effort cheered by Sanders helped con­tribute to the 1943 Ben­gal famine, which Churchill lat­er cal­lous­ly exac­er­bat­ed, lead­ing to the fatal star­va­tion of around 3 mil­lion peo­ple. Accord­ing to author Mad­hus­ree Muk­er­jee, dur­ing World War II, 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.

He con­tin­ued to demand more rice even as India starved, declined offers of wheat from the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, and had Aus­tralian ships car­ry­ing wheat bypass India and trav­el straight to Europe. Leopold Amery, then the Sec­re­tary of State for India, record­ed in his diary Churchill say­ing that ​“the star­va­tion of any­how under-fed Ben­galis is less seri­ous than stur­dy Greeks.”

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.” (Inci­den­tal­ly, 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 Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s grand­fa­ther, were round­ed up in con­cen­tra­tion camps that make Abu Ghraib look like Dis­ney­world. Those strong of stom­ach can read accounts of what the British did to the pris­on­ers for themselves.

Churchill was also not above using chem­i­cal weapons against his ene­mies. In 1919, he pushed for and exe­cut­ed a chem­i­cal attack on the Russ­ian Bol­she­viks using the so-called ​“M Device,” an explo­sive shell that released a poi­so­nous gas that caused vic­tims to cough up blood and vom­it uncon­trol­lably. Churchill also want­ed to use the weapon against the north­ern Indi­an tribes rebelling against British rule, and was frus­trat­ed by his col­leagues’ hes­i­tan­cy to do so, say­ing: ​“Why is it not fair for a British artillery­man to fire a shell which makes the said native sneeze?”

Lat­er, 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’s puz­zling as to why, of all peo­ple, Sanders chose a fig­ure with a record this bloody to cite as an influ­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly after hav­ing denounced Kissinger so vehe­ment­ly ear­li­er in the debate. Even Clin­ton went with the safe choice of Nel­son Man­dela in her response. Maybe Churchill was just the first name that came to the Ver­mont Senator’s mind. But it’s also true that Churchill has come to stand as a sym­bol for mil­i­tary com­pe­tence and far-sight­ed­ness, easy short­hand for politi­cians attempt­ing to shore up an image of strength. It’s no sur­prise that George W. Bush elect­ed to keep a bust of Churchill loaned to him by the British gov­ern­ment in the Oval Office through­out his presidency.

Sanders’ choice of Churchill may be sym­bol­ic, but it’s a point­ed sym­bol. While he has staked out dif­fer­ences with Clin­ton on cer­tain aspects of for­eign pol­i­cy through­out the cam­paign, he’s been far less will­ing to break with estab­lish­ment for­eign pol­i­cy think­ing than his coun­ter­part in the UK, Jere­my Corbyn.

Corbyn’s oppo­si­tion to inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia, his gen­er­al anti-war stance and his crit­i­cism of the UK’s Tri­dent nuclear pro­gram have caused the bulk of the con­flict over his lead­er­ship, with one British gen­er­al warn­ing of ​“mutiny” among the armed forces if Cor­byn put some of his ideas into place. Oth­er than some mock­ing of his lack of knowl­edge of for­eign pol­i­cy, Sanders has received no such push­back in the Unit­ed States.

The Sanders cam­paign, how­ev­er, is built on the idea that polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy has no place in his pres­i­den­cy. It’s dis­ap­point­ing, to say the least, that this prin­ci­ple doesn’t seem to apply to his views on for­eign policy.