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What about when the entire left voted for going to Iraq twenty years ago? (Except Bernie Sanders I believe)

runarberg 3y ago
> The dramatic, much-debated vote on Joint Resolution 114 was taken on Oct. 11, 2002. It passed the Senate by a vote of 77 to 23, and the House of Representatives by a vote of 296 to 133. In the end, 156 members of Congress from 36 states had enough information and personal insight and wisdom to make the correct decision for our nation and the world community. > Six House Republicans and one Independent joined 126 Democratic members of the House of Representatives in voting NAY. In the Senate, 21 Democrats, one Republic, and one Independent courageously voted their consciences in 2002 against the War in Iraq. https://www.thoughtco.com/2002-iraq-war-vote-3325446 https://www.thoughtco.com/2002-iraq-war-vote-3325446 Worth mentioning among the NAY votes is Barbara Lee representative of California’s 12th congressional district (9th during the vote) who has announced she’ll be running to take Dianne Feinstein’s (who voted YAY) seat in the 2024 senate race, and is a favorite among many progressives (i.e. left wing Democrats).
nonethewiser 3y ago
I still don’t understand why people think it was the wrong decision.
- runarberg 3y ago
  I’m sorry for the snark, but Major General Smedley Butler offers a generic explanation for wars in general in his 1935 essay War is a Racket. But for the Iraq war specifically (a part from the racketeering) why many people think it was the wrong decision is in large part based on the lies and deceptions that were used to justify the invasion. At the time many people believed those lies and thought they were justifiable reasons for the invasion. When it later turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction, that ties of the Ba'ath party to terrorist organizations were none, that the USA imposed government was corrupt and offered little benefits to regular people over Saddam’s dictatorship, etc. etc. When this all became common knowledge, on top of all the war crimes, the torture scandals, the massacres, after Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange went to prison for revealing some of those war crimes, many of these people who previously believed the war was justified, changed their opinion of it.

> The dramatic, much-debated vote on Joint Resolution 114 was taken on Oct. 11, 2002. It passed the Senate by a vote of 77 to 23, and the House of Representatives by a vote of 296 to 133. In the end, 156 members of Congress from 36 states had enough information and personal insight and wisdom to make the correct decision for our nation and the world community. > Six House Republicans and one Independent joined 126 Democratic members of the House of Representatives in voting NAY. In the Senate, 21 Democrats, one Republic, and one Independent courageously voted their consciences in 2002 against the War in Iraq. https://www.thoughtco.com/2002-iraq-war-vote-3325446 https://www.thoughtco.com/2002-iraq-war-vote-3325446 Worth mentioning among the NAY votes is Barbara Lee representative of California’s 12th congressional district (9th during the vote) who has announced she’ll be running to take Dianne Feinstein’s (who voted YAY) seat in the 2024 senate race, and is a favorite among many progressives (i.e. left wing Democrats).

nonethewiser 3y ago

I still don’t understand why people think it was the wrong decision.

runarberg 3y ago
I’m sorry for the snark, but Major General Smedley Butler offers a generic explanation for wars in general in his 1935 essay War is a Racket. But for the Iraq war specifically (a part from the racketeering) why many people think it was the wrong decision is in large part based on the lies and deceptions that were used to justify the invasion. At the time many people believed those lies and thought they were justifiable reasons for the invasion. When it later turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction, that ties of the Ba'ath party to terrorist organizations were none, that the USA imposed government was corrupt and offered little benefits to regular people over Saddam’s dictatorship, etc. etc. When this all became common knowledge, on top of all the war crimes, the torture scandals, the massacres, after Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange went to prison for revealing some of those war crimes, many of these people who previously believed the war was justified, changed their opinion of it.