"...before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran..." --Mustachioed Chickenhawk John Bolton to M.E.K. terrorists on July 1, 2017

As we get closer and closer to the 2020 election, we should never forget that Donald Trump has selected the number-one cheerleader for war against Iran as his National Security Advisor, especially since Bolton's publicly-proclaimed deadline for meeting his terrorist allies in Tehran has already passed. This New York Times video from last year, "John Bolton Wants Regime Change In Iran. What's His Alternative?" should be seen by all Americans before the Trump Administration's gunboat diplomacy turns the Persian Gulf into another Tonkin Gulf with trumped-up reasons for yet another disastrous American war. There have already been many too many misguided military adventures carried out under our flag in my lifetime.

"I have said for over ten years, since coming to these events, that the declared policy of the United States of America should be the overthrow of the mullahs' regime in Tehran." -- Chickenhawk N.S.A. John Bolton speaking to the M.E.K., July 1, 2017

I haven't posted much on this True Blue Liberal blog in the past year, but with the current administration currently rattling sabers in Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, North Korea, and elsewhere, we should all be prepared to speak out loudly and immediately and publicly (especially since we have a Congress that has handed all of its constitutional war powers to an authoritarian executive branch elected by a minority of Americans) whenever military action seems imminent. It doesn't seem like it's enough to type #ImAlreadyAgainstOurNextWar on Twitter every day. I need to start stating my anti-war opinions more clearly than can be done in 280 characters.

A Day to Remember Ernest Gruening and Wayne Morse

On this fiftieth anniversary of the passing of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that pulled us deeper into Vietnam on false pretenses, I wasn't happy to turn on my computer at lunchtime to see this updated headline about Iraq on The New York Times' homepage:

"U.S. Weighs Iraq Airstrikes, Citing Crisis" The New York Times, 8/7/2014 at 1pm EDT

On August 7, 1964, the House voted unanimously and the Senate voted with only two exceptions to give President Johnson the authority to "take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force" in Vietnam after an incident between American warships and North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Gulf of Tonkin that turned out to be not at all what it was presented to be when Johnson and McNamara explained it to the press, the Congress, and the American people.

Members of Congress and the American people should always remember when they read a bellicose headline or watch a speech from a Secretary of Defense or State with professional-looking maps, that only two members of Congress took a correct action 50 years ago today.

All Vietnam is not worth the life of an American boy...
— Alaska Senator Ernest Gruening, August 1964

I believe that history will record this resolution as a historic mistake. I am not going to go along with this kind of program, in South Vietnam … that in my judgment is going to kill needlessly untold numbers of American boys, and for nothing.
— Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, August 1964

If you want more details of the event itself, click here for the the Gulf of Tonkin excerpt from Daniel Ellsberg's Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.