Iraq and Afghanistan
In 2003, President Bush began the war in Iraq against the advice of many military experts and despite calls for restraint from the American people and members of Congress. Then-Congressman Sanders was among those to voice strong opposition to the war at that time, and thereafter.
President Bush told the American people that the war was necessary because Saddam Hussein was hoarding weapons of mass destruction. He insisted the war would be short, and that his strategy would insure a smooth and rapid transition to a stable, democratic government in Iraq. President Bush was, as we all know now, wrong on all counts. Senator Sanders, with foresight, voted against the war, which he believed would be costly, not easily successful, and not justified by the facts on the ground.
Years later, thousands of American soldiers are dead and tens of thousands have been wounded. No evidence that weapons of mass destruction ever existed has been found. President Bush's imprudent actions left our soldiers and the Iraqi people mired in violence, chaos, and civil war for seven years, and only recently has some semblance of civil order been restored.
Bush's misguided war in Iraq had an alarming toll on the people of Iraq. According to UN estimates, millions of Iraqis were displaced by violence. The Iraqi refugee diaspora included more than a million people in Syria and many more in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and elsewhere.
Also, the war - at a time of rising federal deficits - costs the United States $12 billion a month; there are credible estimates that the ultimate cost of the war will be more than $1 trillion. The war put us deeper and deeper in debt as we rebuilt Iraq while we ignored the urgent need to rebuild our aging infrastructure and other unmet needs here at home.
Time and again, Senator Sanders voted for legislation to bring an end to the war and safely redeploy our troops. Additionally, he introduced a resolution in the Senate which affirmed the sole authority of Congress under the U.S. Constitution to declare war.
A colleague of the current president when Obama was in the Senate, Sanders and Obama worked together to push for a timetable for the withdrawal of our troops. Now that Obama is president, Sanders supports his efforts to bring our troops home safely, and turn the future of Iraq over to the Iraqis.
Following the tragic events of 9/11, the United States asked Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaida and its leader Osama bin Laden from that nation, since bin Laden had planned the 9/11 attacks from his base in Afghanistan. When the Taliban government was unresponsive, the American government moved into Afghanistan to find bin Laden and other high-ranking al-Qaeda leaders and put them on trial, to destroy the whole organization of al-Qaeda, and to remove the Taliban regime which supported and gave safe harbor to al-Qaida. Sanders supported this effort, believing that when a nation allowed, enabled and encouraged an attack on the United States and its citizens, America had the right to defend itself.
Sanders was thereafter highly critical of President Bush who, in going to war against Iraq, removed the military's attention from the need to capture bin Laden and to render his allies harmless. Years of a needless Iraqi war allowed bin Laden to escape to a safe haven, and to continue his hatred of our nation.
In those intervening years when the military paid more attention to Iraq than Afghanistan, the possibilities of dealing successfully both with the source of terrorism, and with the Afghan "problem," were greatly reduced. Today corruption in Afghanistan is rampant, with even the presidential election there marred by corrupt practices. A large number of Afghanis want American troops to leave. Sanders believes there must be serious Senate discussion and debate about what our goals in that nation are, how to achieve those goals, and how to withdraw our forces when our mission there is concluded.
