I am proud to stand with my colleagues today to reassert our constitutional authority and introduce legislation—the No War Against Iran Act—to stop President Trump from leading this country into an illegal war against Iran.
The American people are sick and tired of endless wars.
The American people are sick and tired of endless wars.
When I look back upon American history I remember the two most significant foreign policy mistakes our country made in the modern era, and those are the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq. And let us be clear, we were led into both of those wars by a series of lies.
The result: the war in Vietnam cost us 59,000 American deaths and many others who came home wounded in body and spirit. In fact, a whole generation was devastated by that war. The casualties in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are almost incalculable.
In terms of Iraq, we were told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that he was working with Al Qaeda, and that we needed to invade Iraq unless we wanted to see another 9/11, or even worse, a nuclear attack.
Those claims were lies.
Those claims were lies.
The Iraq war led to the deaths of 4,500 U.S. troops, and the wounding of tens of thousands. It led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and the displacement of over 5 million people.
And after all that, the Iraqi parliament voted last week to boot U.S. forces out.
And after all that, the Iraqi parliament voted last week to boot U.S. forces out.
Let’s be clear: another war in the Middle East could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars and lead to even more deaths, more conflict, more displacement in that already highly volatile region of the world.
I will do everything that I can as a United States Senator to prevent such a war.
Our Founding Fathers understood that it was only too easy for a president to lead the country into a disastrous military conflict. That is why they gave the exclusive power over war and peace to the people’s elected representatives.
Now is the time for Congress to once again come together and make certain that the president will not have one penny to spend on a war in Iran unless there is Congressional authorization. #NoWarWithIran
