WASHINGTON—By one vote, the U.S. Senate backed GOP President Donald Trump’s War on Iran.
Technically, 50 senators—all but one of them Republicans–killed a resolution invoking the War Powers Act against Trump. Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., a war hawk, missed the vote and did not say why.
The resolution declared the legal 60-day window for war is over, and the troops and planes must come home, unless Congress gives its OK for them to stay and fight. As far as Trump is concerned, the defeat of the War Powers resolution is the equivalent, at least for now, of endorsing the war.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began the war of choice on February 28, and while Trump says there’s a ceasefire, right-wing militarist Netanyahu says there isn’t and is bombing Lebanon as well as Iran.
Republican war supporters seized on the cease-fire to argue the 60-day clock should reset—a contention the leaders of the anti-war bloc, Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., scoffed at.
The 49 war foes included 44 Democrats, plus Republicans Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul of Kentucky, longtime war foe Bernie Sanders, Ind,-Vt., and Sen. Angus King, Ind-Maine. The renegade Democrat who voted for Trump’s war was Pennsylvanian John Fetterman, one of the Senate’s most outspoken supporters of Netanyahu.
“The time to stop arming Netanyahu and hold him accountable for his crimes against humanity is NOW,” Sanders recently tweeted about the combined U.S.-Israeli bombing of Iran, Israel’s bombing of Lebanon, and its all-out war—armed with U.S.-made one-ton bombs and U.S.-manufactured aircraft—against Gaza and its two million inhabitants.
Merkley told reporters at the time of the vote that while Trump named the war “Operation Epic Fury,” it’s really “Operation Epic Failure.
“Rather than hold President Trump accountable for his reckless warmongering, Senate Republicans again rubber-stamped Trump’s unconstitutional war with Iran,” Merkley opened a later statement. In it, he pointed out that the war has, in some ways, strengthened Iran’s global military and political position.
Fetterman did not issue his own statement about his stand as the sole Democrat to support Trump. Instead, he endorsed a pro-war tweet by Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss. It read in part that Trump “should direct his skilled military leaders to finish destroying Iran’s conventional military capabilities and eliminating any last remnants of their nuclear program. This is the only way to ensure lasting stability in the region.”
In voting to continue the war by sidetracking the War Powers Act invocation, the senators defied the majority of the U.S. people and also prominent war foes, including Sanders, Merkley, and Bishop William Barber II of the New Poor People’s campaign.
“War is a moral issue, not just a political issue,” said Bishop Barber, who has promised public/clergy protests against it every Monday a block from the White House.
“The use of public money should reflect public values. People of faith must show up in the public square alongside interfaith, multi-faith, and non-faith communities to take local action and bear witness to this moment.”
Every public opinion poll since Trump and Netanyahu launched the war has shown a majority of respondents against it. But the most detailed survey, by the Pew Research Center, showed an overall 61% against it to 37% for it. Overwhelming majorities of Democrats and independents opposed it, as did 20% of strong Republicans and 30% of voters who lean GOP.
And a majority of those same 3,524 respondents combined of all parties believe the war will last at least six months. An internal Trump War Department memo unearthed by news media in mid-April contained a Pentagon prediction that it would last until at least September.
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