So how can this sanctions, rubber stamp war bill be stopped?
With a full realization that my heart is against the war due to the reasons outlined by
Dr. King below, the best attack on the Iran sanctions bill might be financial.
If the republicans can argue against unemployment benefits by insisting it's paid for ahead of time, they should pay for war with Iran before outsourcing the decision to Israel. three trillion of taxes, find them, support them now, and recommend support for the sanctions bill conditional on finding that 3 trillion dollars, otherwise, they are running up the credit card more for our children to pay. Or pay off our current 17 trillion in debt first, take your pick. For people who want to read about why I think war with Iran is a bad idea see below the squiggly line.
A new war with Iran would kill thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands. I can only quote Dr. King to bring home the gravity of dreaming of war.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Studies of this bankrupt idea of war with Iran find that after ten years Iran would have nuclear capabilities again. Pakistan already has nukes, and gave plans for them to North Korea. The idea that we could support a war on Iran and not have human disaster of death and broken bodies on our conscience is a start, but the malevolent nature of this possible foreign policy disaster is more fully appreciated if it's failure in each area is at least mentioned. A few links going through the risks more carefully are as follows:
1. Death toll. Many accounts have the number of Iraqi deaths well over a hundred thousand, US deaths approaching 5000 and wounded some estimates are over 200,000 Service members with traumatic brain injury. See link to article re wounded estimate: Estimate
2. Unanticipated risks. Iran is estimated at 10 times the strength of Iraq, may block shipping Through Strait of Hormuz both directly and simply a few attacks on ships can make oil tankers lose their insurance. They would sit there.
3. Other risks include all the normal risks of a war, with added risks of gas at 10 dollars a gallon, and China being furious. As above Pakistan already is fully nuclear armed, and leaky as far as nuclear secrets, and kept nominally in check with billion dollar bribes, but the US is hated and feared in Pakistan, and blithely assuming causing a hundred thousand more deaths in a middle eastern country wouldn't radicalize more of Pakistan's population would be a problem too.
Elizabeth Murray Article
America's hometown newspaper, Aljazeera