The Most Unpopular War in American History?

The night before l voted against going to war in Iraq, my sister, Beverly, told me that a Knoxville television station had run a poll and found that in East Tennessee, 74 percent were in favor of going to war, 9 percent were against it, and 17 percent were undecided.

In very sharp contrast, the New York Times said only 41 percent favored going to war in Iran, and several polls showed even less support, in the 20-30 percent range, before the war started.

In comparison, the Times survey said 97 percent favored going to war after Pearl Harbor, 92 percent supported the war in Afghanistan, and 76 percent were for going to war in Iraq.

Despite a brief “rally around the flag” period shortly after the Iran War started because many feel they should “support the troops,” this war has become less popular with each passing day. In fact, many people have called it the most unpopular war in US history.

I became one of Donald Trump’s first Congressional endorsers because he was the only Republican running for President in 2016, after Rand Paul decided not to run, who had criticized the war in Iraq.

Also, Trump promised to run with an America First agenda, which I had supported as far back as the campaigns of Pat Buchanan, who was a hero to me.

However, the war in Iran is putting Israel First, making Benjamin Netanyahu’s dreams come true. It is certainly not putting America First.

Nothing hits home in this land of pickup trucks more than sharp increases in gas prices. Also fertilizer and natural gas prices have gone way up. If this war continues and gas goes to $5 or $6 a gallon, and grocery and utility bills jump up at the same time, Republicans will suffer very big losses in November.

I wish every gas station would post signs thanking Netanyahu, Lindsay Graham, and Mark Levin for the higher gas prices. These three blind warmongers have been the main cheerleaders for war in Iran and seem to be the closest to Trump’s ear on this.

Of course they have been aided and abetted by Miriam Adelson’s $100 million and the propaganda machine at Fox News. All of the hosts on Fox and the editors at the Wall Street Journal and New York Post know they would be gone very quickly if they if they failed to adhere to Rupert Murdoch’s Israel First agenda.

I have stuck with Trump all through his trials and tribulations, even though he has said and done things that his strongest supporters, and probably even his own children, wish he had not said or done. He has made it very hard on his supporters at times.

The President has made me feel like a ping pong ball at times. I loved it when he said in his Inaugural Address that his success would be determined “perhaps most importantly by wars we never get into.”

I loved when he said in February of last year that there was no good reason that we should be spending a trillion dollars a year on the military and that defense spending could be cut in half. Now he wants a whopping one trillion, 500 billion for defense (war).

I loved it when he attacked neocons, nation builders, and interventionists in a speech in Riyadh last May. Now he is fighting a war and following foreign policies that his friend John Bolton (sarcasm intended) and other neocons are cheering.

The storyline out of the recent Conservative Political Action Conference was support for Trump on everything else but not on the Iran War. I still support Trump and agree with Fox News on most things, but they have lost me and most conservatives when they follow neocon foreign policies.

George Will once wrote that neocons were “magnificently misnamed” and that they were really “the most radical people in this City (meaning Washington).

William F. Buckley first supported the war in Iraq and then later regretted doing so. He told Will that there was “nothing conservative” about that war, and there is nothing conservative about this war either.

Finally, looking back at the 74 percent support for going to war in Iraq mentioned above, you can understand why I wondered if I might be ending my political career when I voted against it. This was clearly the most unpopular thing I had ever done.

But very, very slowly, and much to my amazement, after three or four years, that vote became the most popular of the over 16,000 votes I cast during my 30 years in the US House.

Reprinted from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.