Bernie Sanders has been consistent on his position toward the Iraq war since it was first conceived. While Republicans are beating their war drums over the Iran nuke deal, it’s important to remember what a sane voice sounds like on Middle East issues.
Just last July, Bernie Sanders authored a piece in the Boston Globe in which he discussed the often under-reported costs of war:
The cost of war is more than 6,800 service members who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost of war is caring for the spouses and children who have to rebuild their lives after the loss of their loved ones. It’s about hundreds and thousands of men and women coming home from war with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, many of them having difficulty keeping jobs in order to pay their bills. It’s about high divorce rates. It’s about the terrible tragedy of veterans committing suicide.
The cost of war is about supporting family caregivers for disabled veterans. It’s about 2,500 young men and women who would like to start families but are unable to do so because of war wounds.
Bernie Sanders continued discussing what we owe to the veterans we send to fight our battles:
The bottom line is that if we are going to send poeple off to battle, we must understand what the war experience means to their lives and do everything we can to make them whole when they return. If we can’t do that, we shouldn’t be sending them into war in the first place. That’s the contract we have with the people who put their lives on the line to defend us.
Watch the video below of Bernie Sanders opposing the Iraq war in the House of Representatives.
