Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on Tuesday evening said that a potential war with Iran will also be a “class war,” echoing the sentiments of presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and fellow squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), both of whom immediately framed a potential war with Iran as a “class conflict.”
“War is also class war #nowarwithiran,” Omar wrote on Instagram. She also posted a screenshot of her tweet in which she said: “It is not the wealthy who suffer most in war. It is the working class soldier who volunteers for his country.”
Over the weekend, Sanders on Instagram posted Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet in which she said: “War is a class conflict, too. The rich and powerful who open war escape the consequences of their decisions. It’s not their children sent into the jaws of violence. It is often the vulnerable, the poor, & working people -who had little to no say in conflict – who pay the price.”
“As the former chair of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, I have seen up close the pain, death, and despair caused by war,” Sanders wrote on Instagram below the screenshot of Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet. “And I know that it is rarely the children of the billionaire class who face the agony of reckless foreign policy.”
Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who is a co-chair of his presidential campaign, introduced legislation last week that would reportedly “block funding for any offensive military force in or against Iran without prior congressional authorization,” warning of a “dangerous escalation that brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East.”
“A war with Iran could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars and lead to even more deaths, more conflict, more displacement in that already highly volatile region of the world,” they said in a statement. “At a time when we face the urgent need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, to build the housing we desperately need, and to address the existential crisis of climate change, we as a nation must get our priorities right. We must invest in the needs of the American people, not spend trillions more on endless wars.”
On Monday, Sanders told CNN host Anderson Cooper that the current conflict with Iran is reminiscent of the lead up to the Iraq invasion.
“What frightens me most is what we are seeing now sounds very much like what I observed and the American people observed in terms of the war in Iraq, something that I vigorously opposed. What we heard was an administration lying about intelligence. We got involved in a war we never should have got involved in,” Sanders said. “We lost 4,500 brave soldiers. Thousands more were wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were displaced and died. We spent trillions of dollars on that war, that should have been spent at home, providing health care or rebuilding our infrastructure.”
Sanders said he feared that if the United States goes to war with Iran, “it will be even worse.”
“And I will do everything I can as a United States senator, in terms of defunding any effort of the Trump administration to go to war, do anything I can to stop what I think will be another disaster,” he continued.
Sanders, who is vowing to take on the “billionaire class” on a host of other issues, also said last week that the billionaire class would barely make any sacrifices if the country goes to war with Iran.
“I know that it is rarely the children of the billionaire class who face the agony of reckless foreign policy. It is the children of working families,” Sanders reportedly said at a campaign event. “As we all remember, Trump promised to end endless wars. Tragically, his actions now put us on the path to another war, potentially one that could be even worse than before.”
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