Bernie Sanders on war with Iran

Bernie Sanders was on Face the Nation this past weekend, Full interview: Bernie Sanders on "Face the Nation" 06/23/2019:

The segment of the interview about Iran policy particularly caught my attention:

BRENNAN: I want to ask you about Iran.

SANDERS: Good.

BRENNAN: Was President Trump's decision this week to call of that strike the right one?

SANDERS: [chuckles] See, it's like somebody setting a fire to a basket full of paper and then putting it out. He helped create the crisis. And then he stopped the attacks.

The idea that we're looking at a President of the United States who, number one, thinks that a war with Iran is something that might be good for this country ...

BRENNAN: He was just doing a limited strike.

SANDERS: [waving hands] Oh, just a limited strike, oh, well, I'm sor-RY. I just didn't know that it's okay to simply attack another country with bombs.

[With air-quotes:] "Just a limited strike."

That's an act of warfare.

So, two points. That will set off a conflagration all over the Middle East. If you think the war - as I do - the war in Iraq, Margaret, was a disaster. I believe to the bottom of my heart that the war, a war with Iran would be even worse, more loss of life, never-ending war in that region, massive instability. We're talking about, we have been in Afghanistan now for 18 years. This thing will never end! So I will do everything I can, number one, to stop a war with Iran.

And, number two, and here's an important point. Y'know, let's remember what we learned in civics, y'know, when we were kids. It is the United States Congress under our Consstitution that has war-making authority. Not the President of the United States. If he attacks Iran, in my view, that would be un-Consititutional.

I'll indulge myself in a bit of "theater criticism" here. Brennan's framing of the question on the strike, "Was President Trump's decision this week to call of that strike the right one?", is appropriate. That's the way it's been discussed, and others, including some Democrats, have used the incident to accuse Trump of a show of weakness. Journalists should ask probing and provocative questions. And it would have been a important moment if Sanders had simply accepted the premise of the question. In that case, an appropriate follow-up question would have been, "Do you think the decision to attack was the right one?"

But she displayed the underlying militarized and imperial mindset of way too much of the corporate media when she interrupted his answer with, "He was just doing a limited strike."

Former President Jimmy Carter, who when he was President was considered part of the more conservative wing of the Party - both Ted Kennedy and Jerry Brown mounted primary challenges against him in 1980 - told his Sunday School class earlier this year that the United States is “the most warlike nation in the history of the world." (Brett Wilkins, Jimmy Carter: US 'Most Warlike Nation in History of the World' Common Dreams 04/18/2019; Emma Hurt, President Trump Called Former President Jimmy Carter To Talk About China NPR 04/15/2019)

The casual assumption in the mainstream media that the US can routinely launch military strikes and start wars is one reflection of the time of militarist thought that is way too present in American politics. Andrew Bacevich's description in The New American Militarism (2005) is still an important description of the grim phenomenon 15 years and two Presidents later.

What Sanders showed in his response was not only that he takes the issue very seriously but that he actually is emotionally engaged with what a serious matter it is to take the country to war. Way too many Democratic politicians - and virtually all Republicans - are more concerned to highlight their willingness to threaten war.

Sanders also brought up Trump's threat to round up and expel millions of undocumented workers and rightly called it "horrific" and "un-American."