Thursday, April 9, 2015

Where Are The Anti-War Democrats?

Millions of people are expected to take to the streets of towns and cities across the globe on Saturday to demonstrate against a looming U.S. led war on Iraq in the biggest protests since the Vietnam war. February 15, 2003. (Reuters / Peter MacDiarmid)

Peter Beinart, The Atlantic: Where Are the Anti-War Democrats on Iran?

Liberal doves need to find candidates who can bring Congress's foreign policy into line with the desires of the American people.

Many in Congress want the chance to kill the Iran deal. President Obama doesn’t want to give them that opportunity. I’m torn.

Like many liberals, I think America is generally better off when Congress has more oversight over foreign policy. It’s no coincidence that the greatest foreign policy disaster of the twentieth century, Vietnam, occurred near the height of what Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called “The Imperial Presidency.” And the greatest foreign policy disaster of the twenty-first century occurred when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney created another imperial presidency after 9/11. Seeking unaccountable presidential power is a bipartisan affliction, and so even progressives who sympathize with Barack Obama’s foreign policy should be worried by his efforts to deny Congress a voice over something as big as a nuclear deal with Iran.


WNU Editor: Someone should tell Peter Beinart that it was the anti-war Democrats are the ones who negotiated this Iranian nuclear deal .... and may have laid the groundwork for another war. As to America's continuing participation (directly or indirectly) in the wars of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, now Yemen, Libya, Mali, Somalia, the tribal regions of Pakistan, and about 15 other smaller conflicts .... the question needs to be answered .... where are the anti-war demonstrators?

2 comments:

Bob Huntley said...

Influenced in part by the anti-war protestors the Vietnam war ended in 1975. Only four years later when the Iranians took 52 Americans hostage young men were lining up at US recruitment centres clamoring for a chance to go to war against Iran. It didn't take long for Americans to want war again and if it weren't for Carter perhaps Iran would have been invaded then.

I can't remember the entire quote but in describing Americans someone after extolling all their virtues finished with 'and in his heart, every American is a killer'.

James said...

"The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted." — D.H. Lawrence