Part of the secret to Donald Trump’s rise to power was posturing, at least occasionally, as a peacemaker — a no nonsense businessman who would cut America’s losses and avoid quagmires that drained immense sums of tax dollars at the expense of “putting America first.” The peak of Trump’s peace posturing came in a September 2024 campaign speech in Mosinee, Wisconsin. There, he pledged to drive the “warmongers” and “war profiteers” from Washington, proudly proclaiming that he “had no wars” in his first go around as president.
Trump’s pledges of peace were always more calculated than deeply felt, aiming at the parts of his conservative base — including many veterans — who were sick of endless wars. Beating up on Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton over their support for the Iraq war was part of this peace posturing tactic, though Trump barely said a discouraging word while that war was going on.
That was then and this is now, a little more than a month into an escalating Middle East war. Trump seemed to think that he could wage a quick war that would install a sympathetic, pro-US ruler in Iran. Instead, the Israeli and US strikes on Iran have sparked a region-wide war that is barreling out of control, with ground troops being sent to the region, perhaps to seize the Iranian oil processing facilities on Kharg Island, or perhaps even to attempt to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, depending which presidential statement you believe. A ground operation at any level would only compound the disasters of this war for all concerned.
Meanwhile, the resistance to this war is rising. Antiwar themes were front and center in the recent, massive No Kings rallies, alongside continuing protests against the war at home being perpetrated through ICE, the Justice Department, and the full repressive machinery at the disposal of this administration.
In the midst of all of this, there have been some stalwart, and perhaps to some, surprising voices of opposition in Congress. Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ro Khanna, and Mark Pocan, among others on the Democratic side of the aisle, all oppose the assault on Iran. Among Republicans, Rand Paul, Lauren Boebert, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie Taylor Green (who left office earlier this year) have called for an end to this war. Yet, though the war has become a horrific, out-of-control spiral in the Middle East, the antiwar contingent does not have a majority in Congress. So long as Congress refuses to defund this war, the bloodshed will continue. And as long as Congress fails to slash the Pentagon budget down to size, the risk of similarly deadly, future conflicts will persist.
The first front in the battle to make America peaceful — at long last, and for the first time in this century — would need to be a strong Congressional vote against the proposed $200 billion supplemental appropriation to continue the war on Iran and stock up to fight similar wars in the future. In parallel, Trump’s idea of adding $500 billion to the Pentagon’s base budget — on top of that $200 billion supplemental proposal — is absurd.
Neither of these things will happen without concerted public pressure from across the political spectrum. Left to their own devices, and faced with the money, power, and jobs wielded by the war lobby, members of Congress may limit themselves to demanding more details about the Pentagon’s reckless budget plans, or shaving off a few billion dollars here or there, or perhaps spreading these obscene levels of spending over a few years time rather than trying to ram them down the throats of the taxpaying public in a single, budget-busting year.
So what is to be done?
There are plenty of reasons to oppose this war — moral, political, strategic, and economic — but at root the future of this country is at stake. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said so presciently in his April 1967 anti-Vietnam War speech at Riverside Church, the war at home and wars abroad have always been intricately intertwined and mutually reinforcing. We cannot defeat one without fighting equally fiercely against the other:
“There is an obvious . . connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. . . . there was a shining moment in the struggle [when] it seemed as if there was a real hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. . . Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I saw this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.”
And so it is now, with basic programs for nutrition, health care, and housing slashed by the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” — in fact the ugliest piece of legislation to pass in Washington in decades — while the Pentagon’s current budget, before the proposed buildup to come, is far higher than it was at the peak of the Vietnam War, and nearly twice what it was, adjusted for inflation, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower raised the alarm about unwarranted influence wielded by the military-industrial complex in 1961.
Meanwhile, trillions in tax breaks for the rich are firmly written into law, and Silicon Valley militarists like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are seeking to destroy basic protections like independent testing of new weapons systems and processes to prevent price gouging by greedy contractors, with enthusiastic support from the Trump administration, which, after all, owes its election in significant part to their backing, and has employed many of its favorite operatives in top positions, including vice-president JD Vance, who was employed and financed by Palantir founder Peter Thiel.
America is running out of tools to protect the country from the real risks it faces — not military threats emanating from Iran or China, but the climate crisis, the risk of new pandemics, the war on immigrants, the rise of inequality and discrimination against women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community, the attempts to drive the teaching of accurate history out of our public schools, and the attempts to demonize anyone who stands up against these clear and present injustices.
On the foreign policy front, this administration has dismantled the agency responsible for foreign assistance, driven trained diplomats out of the State Department, denigrated and withdrawn from international institutions, and insulted longtime allies. All the while, it is showering funds on ICE and seeking record Pentagon budgets. In a telling sign of just how skewed America’s priorities are, the first week of the war on Iran cost at least $11.6 billion, which is more than the entire proposed annual budgets of the Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency combined, even as the climate crisis intensifies and efforts to prevent new pandemics wane. The administration is also cutting benefits for veterans of past wars and proposing to put current military personnel — yet again — in the midst of an unjustified and unwinnable war.
So we must defund this assault on our democracy and our common humanity. And that means members of Congress need to stand up, in sufficient numbers, in ways that they have not done in a very long time. To do so, they will need to feel like they have no choice, and that if they don’t defund the war on Iran and rebalance our budget towards more constructive pursuits, they will be swept out of office. That, in turn, will call for activism on all possible fronts, from the streets of our cities to the suites of businesses, law firms, and universities that have shamefully bent the knee to far too many policies that are causing millions of people their lives, livelihoods, and homes at this very moment. And whether you are a Democratic Socialist, a libertarian, a mainstream Democrat, or a Trump supporter who believed he would bring peace and prosperity, the time to press our elected representatives to stop this war and scale back the war machine is now.
For starters, an all-hands-on-deck effort is needed to persuade Congress to vote down — not just reduce — the administration’s supplemental appropriation for its reckless, delusional war on Iran. Likewise, if the administration indeed seeks a $500 billion increase in the Pentagon’s already bloated budget, Congress must be pressed to reject it, and instead to scale back our current, enormous $1 trillion payout to the Pentagon and its contractors (which receive over half of that $1 trillion figure). That’s asking a lot of a Congress that has largely given the Pentagon its way throughout this century, but time is short and the task is urgent. Members who don’t stand up against the rising tide of militarism that is destroying large parts of the Middle East and starving basic needs at home should face the wrath of the voters in the midterms. This cannot stand.