When it comes to Republican-led saber-rattling, many Democrats make the misstep of saying the Republicans are right in principle but wrong in practice. You’ll recall plenty of Democrats who buried their opposition to war with Iraq under mounds of GOP talking points about the evil of Saddam Hussein, the need to spread democracy in the Middle East through merciless bombing, etc.
But today, Sen. Ed Markey has been the national pace-setter for Democrats in establishing his clear, unequivocated opposition to President Trump’s sudden move towards war with Iran:
The Boston Globe rounds up other Massachusetts Congressional delegation responses to Trump’s Iran escalation. While Rep. Ayanna Pressley also stood in clear, strong opposition to war with Iran, unfortunately many other Democrats made the stumble of starting by agreeing with Trump in principle, before then saying they disagree with him in practice:
The question is not whether Soleimani is a bad guy. The question is whether he’s worth starting a war over!
And the question is not whether war with Iran has been properly approved. The question is why we’re moving toward war at all!
We should be bringing our troops home from the Middle East, not starting pointless new wars. Democrats should just say that!
Yes, his statement was good. Most statements from Democrats, including most of the Presidential candidates, have been awful.
We should oppose war. Full stop. We shouldn’t oppose it because it was done without permission or wasn’t smart.
I have yet to see a great response from an elected official that doesn’t still completely center Americans. There will be casualties and suffering for American personnel but they will be little compared to the devastation and suffering that hundreds of thousands of innocent people could face. If this expands to a larger war, people in the region will experience a 9/11 every single day.
We don’t need no stinkin’ standards to oppose war.
Fake outrage and concern. He’s for nothing, just against Trump.
We are conned into imagining there are two different sides to this.
Democrats do not have clean hands in all this. While the Iran Nuclear Deal was Obama’s signature national security achievement, he simultaneously fought two proxy wars against the country. Obama’s clandestine arming and training of opponents to the Assad regime was in the CIA’s largest operation since Afghanistan in the ’80s. The US government has attributed at least 100,000 casualties to these proxies. And then we could also talk about Yemen…
This is a whole branch of Islam that was NOT involved in 9/11 and has even worked with us against Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Yet we’ve somehow managed to lump them into the war on terror (for geostrategic reasons that have never been fully explained to the American people). When we facilitate the killing of Iran’s coreligionists (including an unknown number of Iranians) this obviously increases the chances of war down the road. Yes Trump is flinging the match, but Democrats meticulously stacked the wood and doused the gasoline.
Establishment Democrats know that Americans are against this stuff, which is why they are now burning candles for peace. But they wage war every other day of the week. I get that the Democratic establishment doesn’t like Gabbard and Sanders. But they have shown themselves to be so totally irresponsible in the exercise of power, they should expect their “Bernie problem” to worsen over time.
Uprated with a caveat. Gabbard is unfortunately a useful idiot for Russian propaganda. I push back against lumping her in with Bernie who is correctly for impeachment and containing Russia AND avoiding new wars. Imagine that.
It’s because you want to contain Russia, really because you want to force foreigners to do something, that you and Bernie will inevitably be drawn into supporting war sooner or later.
I don’t think Putin wants a war with the US. Containment worked against the Soviets for almost sixty years, it will work against him.
No actual war against the US is needed for Mr. Putin to achieve effective dominance over the entire ME. Yes, there will be some televised combat — it will be approximately as real as the average WWE wrestling exhibition.
The US is no longer containing Vladimir Putin. The US no longer even tries to contain him. About half of America enthusiastically supports a Russian puppet in the White House and Russian stooges in the cabinet and the Senate.
Gabbard is the only candidate to oppose the Syrian proxy war…. If that makes her a “useful idiot” for Russia, then so am I. And that is only the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to the disgusting smear campaign against her, which has gone on for a year now (really deserves a post of its own).
The impeachment is a frivolous mess, compared to Trump’s missteps in the Middle East (issues raised by Gabbard in her censure resolution) as is demonstrated by events now unfolding.
Gabbard is an odd mix of policy positions, not easily pinned on the traditional spectrum. My strongest objection to her is she strikes me as too isolationist.
90% of Democrats in Congress favor bombing Iran. They are just annoyed that Trump will get favorable ratings. So it has been in politics for many years.
Trump is being impeached for not giving free weapons to Ukraine to fight the Russians over there so we don’t fight them here. He was torn to shreds by Democrats for suggesting we leave Syria. I believe that the Republicans in the Senate have threatened to remove him unless he starts bombing more.
Our government basically does the bidding of the arms industry, both parties as well as the permanent bureaucracy, and then makes up these fake fights while everything goes on the same as the last administration.
90% of Dems most certainly do not favor bombing Iran and the jury is still out on the ratings, but I’m doubtful.
Any sources for these conspiracy theories? It’s very easy for Russian and not Iranian cyber intelligence to make anti-American imperialism memes on twitter and see who falls for them. Already Rose McGowan and Colin Kaepernick, and sadly some BMGers are joining their ranks.
What was the percentage of Democrats who voted two weeks ago give Trump the power to attack Iran? Was it anything like 90%?
What vote was that?
Nowhere close. If you’re talking about the NDAA, it’s unlikely the Khanna amendments (which I support) would have tied Trumps hands. He could ignore it just as he is contravening the War Powers Act. Kaine and Pelosi are now trying to stop that too.
I’m glad to see Ed Markey has come out strongly and immediately against escalation with Iran. But it doesn’t erase my memory of him being one of the few Democrats to support the invastion of Iraq in 2002.
I don’t think he was one of a few. Plus all these years later we really need to let that vote go.
No we do not. We would not be in this present day mess with Iran if the Democrats had opposed rather than enabled George W Bush’s war of choice. We are still living with the consequences of his presidency on a daily basis in the Middle East, which was undemocratic but stable under Clinton and his father and has been entirely unstable under Bush II, Obama, and now Trump.
Despite our best intentions to bring peace and democracy to the region using our military, we have failed and will continue to fail. Time to disengage before another generation of young Americans is sent over there. My students are approaching conscription age and I do not want to see a single one of them lose their life in some desert abroad because another American President refuses to learn from the past. Markey enabled it. He owns that vote. At least he appears to have learned from it.
But we can’t undo it and some of us remember the circumstances of the time. Plus the President is responsible for how it was executed, not members of Congress who cast votes for a much abused AUMF. Also, I hear nobody discussing conscription and I doubt that would get very far.
I never bought the “I was giving Bush the authority to go back to the UN” argument since the Biden-Lugar resolution tying his hands to that very outcome was defeated. Biden and Lugar and Markey still voted for the AUMF without that restriction, thus giving Bush a blank check. So did Kerry and Clinton which undermined their attempts to be a credible alternative to Bush and Trump for their presidential campaigns. Splitting the difference with Bush was bad politics and bad policy.
There is nothing stopping the present House Majority and 51 Senators (every Democrat and you can plus Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz who are all on the record favoring a new one) to tear up this bad AUMF and force Trump to authorize a new one.
My biggest beef with Markey’s record is that he and his supporters insist he should take zero criticism for his legacy of bad votes over a host of issues (Iraq, NAFTA, abortion rights, busing) but be given all the credit for his bills that never pass (Cap and Trade, Green New Deal, taking the nuclear strike authority away from the President). He is the perfect Beacon Hill legislator in that regard. Goes with the flow of moderate House or Senate leadership on consequential votes, and then takes credit for sponsoring progressive stuff that will never pass.
I’m skeptical of that particular line too, and wish the vote had not gone the way it did, but the buck stops with the President as to how to execute and apply it. Nobody should be interpreting that AUMF as applicable to anything happening now anyway.
Finally, I’m not sure GND should go in the never pass category. As far as I know it has not been crafted into actual legislation yet. Pretty sure Markey is pro-choice and I’m guessing I liked his vote on NAFTA.
That is an ahistorical statement to make. All of these actions are the direct effects of the cause set forth by the AUMG. There would be no American troops in Iraq for Iran to attack if Saddam were still in power. No Qasem Soleimani on the Bagdhad tarmac to drone. No Shia militias for him to train to attack those Americans who would not be there.
No Iran trying to achieve a nuclear weapon. If we put the genie back in the bottle, Saddam would still be there serving as a buffer between Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran. There would no Syrian Civil War, no Libyan Civil War, no Arab Spring. The Middle East would be stable and safe and 5,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Arabs would still be alive. So this vote matters, it was the most consequential in Markey’s career and if we are going to cite ‘decades of experience’ than it counts to voters that he got it wrong.
Hard to set that standard when his vote for the Iraq War laid a lot of the groundwork for the mess we’re in now. Glad to see Markey is learning for his mistakes at least.
Iraq under Saddam Hussein was the last secular bulwark against an expanding Iran in 2003. The US decision to remove Saddam Hussein was an obvious and predicted disaster that we are still paying the price for.
The ultimate outcome of this disaster will be:
– Iran as a nuclear power
– Israel is destroyed
– The monarchy in Saudi Arabia will be killed or jailed
– Russia is the dominant external force
– America is forcibly expelled from the region
Mr. Markey’s vote authorizing the 2003 invasion was wrong, as was the vote of every Democrat who joined him. I’ve always argued that it was a political necessity, because to vote against that AUMF was to call George W. Bush a liar, and that was politically difficult in complete absence of evidence. That argument was demolished when the Democrats chose to ignore those lies together with the war crimes committed by the George W. Bush administration. Mr. Markey joined in that decision as well as I recall.
His opposition to this latest act is too little too late. I still support him in his primary, but I find his stance on this disingenuous at best. As an elected Representative, he had an opportunity to do the right thing when the AUMF came up for a vote. He squandered that opportunity.
This decision to execute Mr. Soleimani will be recorded by historians as analogous to the role played by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie on June 28, 1914. I believe it was planned and implemented with that goal. I think the most important question facing us will whether or we will use our nuclear capability to intervene. I hope not.
I think the best way to anticipate what Mr. Trump and today’s GOP will do next is to ask “What will most benefit Vladimir Putin”. In that spirit, I expect:
1. The US will offer some token conventional resistance in Iran accompanied by LOTS of bluster — high-profile “hugely successful” missions that make a few easily-repaired craters in a few Iranian runways, for example.
2. The mainstream media will be filled with exciting real-time footage of meaningless combat operations — war makes GREAT television and is great for ratings. The impeachment proceeds are yesterday’s news.
3. Israel will attack Iran, perhaps with nuclear weapons. Russia will take that as an opportunity to destroy Israel, perhaps with nuclear weapons, perhaps not. Russia may employ proxy nations.
4. The US will not respond to the Russian attacks
5. Mr. Trump will claim that he cannot be removed while America is in the midst of a hot war. I don’t know how that will play out.
6. Donald Trump will remain in office in February 2020, with or without a 2020 election, with the enthusiastic support of red-state America.
I think an across-the-board forced national service will and should be re-instituted. As much as I hated the draft as a teenager — my opposition to the draft motivated my lifelong political activity — I hate the results of the “volunteer” military even more. White racist America supported the immoral war in Vietnam because young black men were doing most of the dying. That immoral war stopped when the draft lottery exposed ALL young men to being used as cannon-fodder. White racist America supports the immoral wars we’ve been in for the past three decades because young black men and women do most of the dying — we’ve replaced the explicit coercion of a forced draft with the implicit coercion of a racist economy.
I think forced national service is needed to erode political support for the illegal wars conducted by our corrupt government.
I don’t anticipate the timeline being as bleak as you present it, but we also have no idea how bad this gets. The risks of miscalculation have increased exponentially and Trump and Khomeni are boxing themselves into an inevitable confrontation.
Assuming in item 6 you meant February 2021 since of course he’ll be there in February 2020 given that nobody is predicting his forced removal, he will NOT be there if defeated for re-election. Enough with the conspiracy theories! I would call your item 3 impossible as well.
I indeed meant February of 2021.
@ Enough with the conspiracy theories:
What of those items do you think is a “conspiracy theory”?
@ Item 3 impossible:
Really? Do you think it impossible that a besieged and indicted Benjamin Netanyahu will jump at a chance to wag the dog himself? Do you think it is impossible that he will carry out the thinly-veiled threats against Iran that he’s been making since before Mr. Obama struck the deal that Mr. Netanyahu so strenuously opposed?
Or do you think it is impossible that Russia will respond in kind? Do you think it is impossible that Donald Trump will betray Israel, given that he has sided with Mr. Putin each time he was given a choice?
There is no good outcome here, Christopher, and there are no “conspiracy theories”. There is instead the hard reality of what a rogue President will do in the absence of any effective restraints.
Tom’s scenario is far fetched, I think the likely scenario is scary enough. Iran hits back harder than we expected and directly injuries or kills Americans. The US then has to respond, possibly by following through on Trump’s threats to target cultural sites. That then triggers a full scale naval and air campaign in the Strait of Hormuz leading to many American deaths, the stoppage of the worldwide oil economy, and a possible global recession.
The US could win this exchange, but at great cost, far greater cost than the first phase of the Iraq War. The last Pentagon war game to realistically simulate this scenario had the following American losses:
We have not seen single day casualties like that since WW2. I strongly suspect the American people are not prepared for that kind of war, no matter how Fox News decides to sell it.
@far-fetched:
Let’s stipulate that events transpire as you describe.
What do you think happens after that? I’m interested in how your view of the likely outcome differs from my “far-fetched” scenario.
I’m not claiming prescience, I’m describing as best I where I think all this leads.
I will tag as a conspiracy theory any suggestion that Trump will not leave office at the constitutionally proscribed time, either 1/20/21 or (gulp!) 1/20/25 depending on his re-election fortunes. I also find the use of nuclear weapons extremely unlikely.
@Trump will not leave office:
Fair enough. I hope Paul Krugman and I are mistaken about that. My gut says that if he loses the general election, he and his henchmen will declare the election invalid for some arbitrary reason.
I hope it doesn’t happen that way.
They may well say it, but it will have no effect.
CBS news is reporting that the Air Force staged a “demonstration” in Utah and launched “52 fighter jets in a row”.
It didn’t take long for the onslaught of items from my #1 and #2 to begin.
Nothing like 52 jets in row to stir a patriot’s heart. It’s almost as good as a big Soviet-style military parade.