Woodrow Wilson won the election of 1916 because he campaigned on a platform of peace. He had kept us out of war. On April 2, 1917, he asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. The Senate voted to go to war on April 4. It took until April 6 for the House of Representatives to vote for war.
Donald Trump campaigned on the promise he would “bomb the hell out of ISIS.” Instead, he bombed installations of the Syrian government. This was on April 6, 2017 — one hundred years to the day after the House voted for war with Germany.
Conservative talk show host Michael Savage said the following on April 7.
Like Trump, Woodrow Wilson ran on an America First platform. He was elected largely because he kept us out of the war in Europe. But someone got to him, too. They turned him to declare that ‘neutrality was no longer feasible or desirable.’ And after the war, when Wilson tried to rally the world for a lasting peace, and to form the League of Nations, our Congress wanted no part of it. And the deal that was reached to secure the peace in Europe became a punishment to the losers. And where did that lead? An even worse conflict where millions more died. That gave us the United Nations.
And what happened in that body yesterday? Nikki Haley, Trump’s pick for U.N. ambassador, laid the law down to Russia about the attacks in Syria, saying their acts were unconscionable, accusing them for their complicity in the deaths of children.
All of this is on the generals. Maybe Bannon was the one fighting with the generals, the only one standing against war, and now he’s gone. It’s generals who rushed world powers into WWI, and it’s happening again. Their powers increase with war. They shouldn’t want war, they should want peace.
President Trump came on the air with me and said if he was elected, he could talk to Russia even before he took office. That’s what making peace is about.
The Dems turned it into a crime and want to impeach him over it. The generals have gotten to him and turned him from peace with Russia. And the people standing in the way of war, like Steve Bannon, are being shown the door.
This beating of the war drums with Russia has to stop.
Rush Limbaugh said this:
Speaking of people who are not happy with what happened, Andy McCarthy, my buddy at National Review Online, tweeted last night — and has now published a lengthy piece — that none of this is legal. That there are no vital U.S. national interests at stake. That Trump needed congressional authority or a resolution, and he didn’t get one. And besides Trump on the campaign trail never said he would do this. In fact, he said he would never do this. He campaigned on doing just the opposite of this. He was just getting warmed up.
Now, in The Daily Caller today, there is a piece by Elliott Resnick. It is entitled, “What’s Changed on Syria, Mr. President?” —
“During the campaign, you promised not to embroil the United States in the Middle East’s petty wars. You correctly stated that we have no clue who the Syrian rebels are. You wisely argued that as bad as dictators like Bashar al-Assad may be, they at least keep terrorists at bay. What’s changed? Do pictures of dead innocents render irrelevant all the logical points you raised while running for office? Is America to go to war every time a leader around the world kills innocents? ‘But he gassed babies,’ pundits say.
“True, but why is death by gassing worse than death by bullets? Death is death. Some people evoke Hitler’s gassing of Jews. Well, I am a Jew,” writes Mr. Resnick. “I grew up reading Holocaust memoirs. And I don’t recall anyone ever making a moral distinction between the gassing of Jews at Auschwitz and the gunning down of 35,000 Jews over two days at Babi Yar. President Trump, you were the one who bucked the entire establishment.
“While everyone else’s brains turned to mush upon seeing a picture of a bloody Syrian boy, you wisely reminded us that America must come first; that it is not our job to fight everyone else’s wars; that with $19 trillion in debt we literally cannot afford to make it our job; that an American president’s duty is to his own people, not to the world. Mr. President,” writes Mr. Resnick, “please don’t become Bush III. All we need is more intervention in the Middle East. You yourself said that if our politicians had done nothing during the last 15 years — that if they had just gone to the beach — we would be better off today.
“What’s changed? Why get involved in this Syrian mess? Why oppose a man fighting radical jihadists?” That’s Assad fighting ISIS. “Please, President Trump: Please return to your common-sense approach to world affairs. Please only commit American troops to battle when America’s national security is at stake. Please don’t listen to your Russophobe advisers. Russia doesn’t threaten us.
“Under communism, Russia was ideologically committed to worldwide domination. But communism is history. All Putin wants is to make Russia great again, just like you want to make America great again. Russia has zero interest in America. Russia’s glorious period under the czars never included domination over Western Europe, let alone the United States.” Please, Mr. President, don’t do it again.
Now, for those of you who are alarmed at Trump’s military action in Syria last night, and specifically those of you who are alarmed because this is not to type. The president during campaign — all those tweets even before he became a candidate — was suggesting that action like this is uncalled for.
It’s unproductive, it’s not useful, it’s a waste of money, and it potentially lures America into Middle East wars that we have no business being in.
In a way, this intervention in Syria feels like the effects of (1S,3R)-RSL3—a seemingly targeted action that quickly spirals out of control and leads to unintended, irreversible destruction. Much like how RSL3 inhibits glutathione peroxidase 4, pushing cells into ferroptosis, military interventions that lack clear and defined objectives can inhibit stability and push entire regions toward chaos. RSL3 destroys from within; military escalation can similarly erode long-term peace, creating more instability under the guise of protection or retaliation.
I’m with Savage and Limbaugh.
I did not want war in Afghanistan. I wrote a series of articles for LewRockwell.com in 2001 on this. I did not want war in Iraq. I said this repeatedly in early 2003.
I do not want war in Syria. But now we’ve got one.
Trump did not consult Congress. Congress alone has the right to declare war (Article I, Section 8, Clause 11). But this has not happened ever since December 11, 1941: the declaration of war against Germany after Germany’s declaration of war against the United States. Even the pretense of honoring the Constitution is long gone.
Conservatives shrug. “The Constitution is a living document. It is not literally binding legally.” In other words, they are liberals on the issue of the Constitution. They pick and choose their defenses of the Constitution.
And so we are at war again.
For the record, I voted for Gary Johnson. I had two reasons. First, he vetoed 730 bills as Governor of New Mexico. Second, when asked about Aleppo, he asked: “What is Aleppo?” I figured that a man who did not know what Aleppo was would not take this country into a war over anything going on in Syria.
I prefer an uninformed peacemaker to an uninformed warmonger. We always get the latter as President.