In recent years we’ve seen right and left trade places on war and peace – again. Republicans and conservatives were the biggest backers of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, whereas Democrats and liberals formed the main opposition. It’s the opposite with today’s Ukraine War.
When George W. Bush was president, in October 2002 Congress passed the Authorization of the Use of Military Force for the Iraq War, which let do the invasion in March. It was opposed by liberal Democratic Reps. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, James Clyburn of South Carolina, Jerry Nadler of New York and Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Doris Matsui, Zoe Lofgren and Ana Eshoo of California.
Then in April 2024, for the Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, a $61 billion package to repel the Russian invasion, all of them backed funding the war, Sanders by then in the Senate. Republicans split, 101 yea and 112 nay. Upstart Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia led the opposition, possibly indicating the party’s future.
There are those who consistently opposed both wars, such as former Republican Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. And those who favored both, including Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, now running for the Senate in California. The late Republican Sen. John McCain never saw a local conflict that didn’t require American “boots on the ground” and a call of, “We’re in it, let’s win it.” Biden in the Senate voted for the Iraq war and now forms Ukraine policy.
This goes back to the country’s imperialist history beginning with the Spanish-American War of 1898, under Republican President McKinley. Although he had served as a colonel in that war, as the 1900 Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan he opposed imperialism, but lost to McKinley. The sides flipped again in 1916 when President Wilson, re-elected promsing, “He kept us out of war” and “America First,” in 1917 brought us into World War I under the new slogan, “To make the world safe for democracy.”
Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt called Republicans opposed to helping the UK fight Hitler “isolationists,” but in 1940 won his third presidential term on the slogan, “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign war.” The next March he got Congress to pass the Lend-Lease Act to aid the UK. The Japanese attack on Pearl on Dec. 7 ended almost all opposition to the war.
After the war, Republicans blamed Democratic President Truman for “losing China” to communism, bungling the 1950-53 Korean War and letting Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin steal our A-bomb plans, as shown in last year’s great film, “Oppenheimer.”
In 1965, Democratic President Johnson “escalated” the Vietnam War because he feared losing and being attacked by the anti-communists. When the war dragged on, the peaceniks in his own party, Sens. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Eugene McCarthy, forced him to quit his re-election bid in 1968.
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Republican Richard Nixon won in 1969 and inherited the war – and the Democratic Party’s opposition. After North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam in 1975 under President Gerald Ford, Americans were relieved the whole mess was over and elected Democratic President Jimmy Carter. His weakness toward the Soviets and a sour economy led to Republican Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election on promises of America “standing tall.”
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As a strong anti-communist Republican, I joined the U.S. Army 1978-82 and became a Russian linguist. But after Reagan wound down the Cold War with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, I switched and have opposed all the wars since, especially the Iraq War. I helped write the Orange County Register’s editorials opposing it. My belligerence was against the communist ideology, now dead, otherwise backing George Washington’s maxim in his Farewell Address of a “true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.”
In this election, Kamala Harris continues backing Biden’s interventionism, while former President Trump typically boasted in his convention speech, “I will end every single international crisis that the current administration has created.”
Well, we’ll see. Meanwhile, I’m singing 1960s protester Phil Ochs’ ballad, “I Ain’t Marching Anymore.”
John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board and blogs at johnseiler.substack.com
