Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna: How we stop war with Iran

Opinion by Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna
Mon January 13, 2020

Excerpt:

Congress now has an obligation to adopt a new War Powers Resolution to prohibit unconstitutional military action against Iran, as well as to pass our bipartisan No War Against Iran Act, which uses Congress' power of the purse to defund any unauthorized military force against Iran. We are committed to doing everything in our power in the House and Senate to see that this happens.

Finally, we need to mobilize the American public to get involved. No successful effort to end war happened without massive grassroots pressure. We are collaborating at this very moment with organizers and activists across the country who are responsible for hundreds of demonstrations to prevent war with Iran. Thousands of people are calling their elected representatives to force Congress to serve as a check on this reckless, lawless and deceitful administration. If enough ordinary people get engaged in the political process at this fateful moment, we can change the course of history.

Our young people have never known a world without the United States engaged in an 18-year-old global war. This generation -- which already faces the prospect of a planet on fire, lower living standards than their parents, massive student debt and an economy dominated by Wall Street -- could experience horrors akin to what previous generations suffered in Vietnam and Iraq. This would be unconscionable.

Let us never forget that it is working-class kids who will be the first to fight and die in a new war in the Middle East -- not the children of the billionaire class.

That means that we must also offer a different vision for America -- a vision in which one day human beings on this planet will live in a world where international conflicts are resolved peacefully, not through violence. A world in which global military budgets, like the $1.8 trillion spent in 2018, can be used instead to fight humanity's common enemy: climate change. A world in which the United States uses diplomacy to de-escalate conflict and uses its power and prestige to bring countries together.

Given how unthinkable the alternative is, we have a moral duty to fight for this vision until it is a reality.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/opinions/stop-iran-war-sanders-khanna/index.html