The huge crisis with Iran is more dangerous because so many Democrats have been talking out of both sides of their congressional mouths.<\/p>\n
An example is the recent rhetoric from Sen. Chris Murphy. \u201cThe attack on our embassy in Baghdad is horrifying but predictable,\u201d he tweeted<\/a> on the last day of 2019. \u201cTrump has rendered America impotent in the Middle East. No one fears us, no one listens to us. America has been reduced to huddling in safe rooms, hoping the bad guys will go away. What a disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n Fast forward one week: Murphy was on the Senate floor declaring<\/a> \u201cwe can choose to get off of this path of escalation and make decisions that correct this president\u2019s recklessness and keep Americans safe.\u201d<\/p>\n On the same day, in Murphy\u2019s home state, the Connecticut Mirror <\/em>reported<\/a> that he \u201chas emerged as a leading critic of Trump administration hostility to Iran\u201d and called him \u201cthe most vocal\u201d Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee \u201cin criticizing President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to kill Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s a partisan pattern that\u2019s all too common among Democrats on Capitol Hill \u2013 goading Trump as a wimp and then bemoaning his aggressive actions. And so, in a matter of days, Murphy was decrying the \u201crecklessness\u201d of the same president he\u2019d alleged \u201chas rendered America impotent in the Middle East\u201d because \u201cno one fears us.\u201d<\/p>\n Murphy is one of the better senators on foreign policy \u2013 and that\u2019s a key point here. He still couldn\u2019t resist baiting Trump in a way that implicitly scorned him for failure to use enough military violence.<\/p>\n At a time like this, the spirit of former U.S. Senator Wayne Morse is badly needed. During his 24-year career representing Oregon in the Senate, he rose to prominence as a rigorously consistent defender of international law as well as the US Constitution. An unwavering foe of might-makes-right foreign policy, he unequivocally opposed the Vietnam War from the outset<\/a>.<\/p>\n Morse never backed down. And he refused to play along with questions based on false premises, as network TV footage<\/a> makes clear. During his appearance on the CBS<\/em> program \u201cFace the Nation\u201d in May 1964, fireworks began a split second after moderator Peter Lisagor said: \u201cSenator, the Constitution gives to the president of the United States the sole responsibility for the conduct of foreign policy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCouldn\u2019t be more wrong,\u201d Morse shot back. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t make a more unsound legal statement than the one you have just made. This is the promulgation of an old fallacy that foreign policy belongs to the president of the United States. That\u2019s nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n Lisagor sounded a bit exasperated: \u201cTo whom does it belong then, senator?\u201d<\/p>\n Morse didn\u2019t hesitate. \u201cIt belongs to the American people,\u201d the senator fired back. And he added: \u201cWhat I\u2019m saying is \u2013 under our Constitution all the president is, is the administrator of the people\u2019s foreign policy, those are his prerogatives, and I\u2019m pleading that the American people be given the facts about foreign policy…\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, senator, that the American people cannot formulate and execute foreign policy…\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy do you say that? Why, you\u2019re a man of little faith in democracy if you make that kind of comment,\u201d Morse retorted. \u201cI have complete faith in the ability of the American people to follow the facts if you\u2019ll give them. And my charge against my government is we\u2019re not giving the American people the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n Three months later, Morse was one of only two senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that opened the floodgates to the mass carnage of the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n When President Lyndon Johnson\u2019s iconic adviser Gen. Maxwell Taylor \u2013 a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ex-ambassador to South Vietnam \u2013 appeared<\/a> before the Foreign Relations Committee on February 17, 1966, this exchange (preserved on video<\/a>) ensued:<\/p>\n SEN. MORSE: \u201cWe\u2019re engaged in a historic debate in this country, we have honest differences of opinion. I happen to hold to the point of view that it isn\u2019t going to be too long before the American people as a people will repudiate our war in Southeast Asia.\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n GEN. TAYLOR: \u201cThat of course is good news to Hanoi, senator.\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n SEN. MORSE: \u201cOh I know that that\u2019s the smear artists that your militarists give to those of us that have honest differences of opinion with you, but I don\u2019t intend to get down in the gutter with you and engage in that kind of debate, general. I\u2019m simply saying that in my judgment the president of the United States is already losing the people of this country by the millions in connection with this war in Southeast Asia. And all I\u2019m asking is \u2013 if the people decide that this war should be stopped in Southeast Asia, are you going to take the position that\u2019s a weakness on the home front in a democracy?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n GEN. TAYLOR: \u201cI would feel that our people were badly misguided and did not understand the consequences of such a disaster.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n SEN. MORSE: \u201cWell, we agree on one thing, that they can be badly misguided \u2013 and you and the president, in my judgment, have been misguiding them for a long time in this war.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Much has changed during the last five decades, but deception remains central to the state of perpetual war that funnels mega-billions in profits to the military-industrial complex. The vast majority of Congress members are part of that complex, including most Democrats<\/a>. Instead of thanking those members of Congress for not being worse, progressive constituents should organize to insist that they quickly become much better \u2013 or face escalating protests as well as political consequences.<\/p>\n Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org<\/a> and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy<\/a>. His books include<\/i> War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death<\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The huge crisis with Iran is more dangerous because so many Democrats have been talking out of both sides of their congressional mouths. An example is the recent rhetoric from Sen. Chris Murphy. \u201cThe attack on our embassy in Baghdad is horrifying but predictable,\u201d he tweeted on the last day of 2019. \u201cTrump has rendered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-34538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34538"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34553,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34538\/revisions\/34553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34538"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=34538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}