A coalition of peace groups on Wednesday launched a new national campaign calling for the top Democrats in Congress—Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—to resign from their leadership roles, citing their failure to sufficiently fight back “against a war-crazed Trump administration.”
The coalition, which includes Peace Action and RootsAction, launched a petition declaring that it is “time for congressional Democrats to replace Schumer and Jeffries with leaders who are willing and able to challenge the runaway militarism that has dragged our country into launching yet another insanely destructive war,” this time against Iran.
“Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries have not acted to prevent war on Venezuela or the current war on Iran,” the petition reads. “They worked to delay a vote on Iran until after the war had started, while failing to clearly oppose it before or after the launch of the war. Schumer and Jeffries have shown that they cannot be trusted to prevent more wars, more threats of wars, or the transfer of another half a trillion dollars a year into the war machine.”
Kevin Martin, president of Peace Action—the largest grassroots peace network in the US—said in a statement that he doubts “at this point whether many people look to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries for ‘leadership’ in Congress, but we would settle for them getting with the program and representing their base, and the majority of Americans, who want them to stand strongly against Trump’s illegal wars and domestic terror campaigns against the American people.”
“They need to speak out loudly and clearly, and get their caucuses in line, to oppose the upcoming $50 billion or more for Trump’s illegal war of aggression on Iran, and to cut off US weapons to Israel,” said Martin. “Failing to do so will only increase calls for them to step down or be replaced by colleagues who understand where the American people are on these and other critical issues.”
Since the start of the illegal US-Israeli assault on Iran, Schumer and Jeffries have focused largely on procedural objections to the war, the Trump administration’s incompetence, and the president’s failure to clearly articulate his objectives, rather than explicitly opposing the military onslaught.
In an appearance on NBC‘s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Jeffries declined to say whether he would oppose the Trump administration’s expected push for $50 billion in new funding for the unauthorized war on Iran.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Jeffries said, chiding the administration for failing to “make its case as to the rationale or justification for this war of choice in the Middle East.”
Sarah Lazare and Adam Johnson wrote for The Nation last week that “it’s not enough to check the box, to do the bare minimum, to reinforce every argument for war only to balk at the process and ask whether there’s a ‘plan’ for after the myriad war crimes have already been committed.”
“The only way to read this half-hearted response from the Democratic Party leadership,” they argued, “is de facto support.”
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