OAKLAND, Calif.—Daily Kos, a top group blog and Internet forum for grassroots activism, is aiming for 100,000 signatures on a petition to Congress against President Trump’s threatened war on Iran. The group will deliver its petitions on June 10.
“Let’s storm the gates 100,000 strong!” originators Paul Hogarth and Erin Tulley of the Oakland, Calif.-based group declare. “We need to stop this war before it begins.”
The petition is part of rising citizen activism nationwide against the saber-rattling by Trump and his extreme right-wing national security advisor, John Bolton.
That activism includes both US Labor Against War and the CPUSA, which has issued a strong statement denouncing Trump’s march to militarism in the Middle East – and elsewhere.
Trump and Bolton already sent warships to the Persian Gulf and “are goading Iran to attack first so they can retaliate,” Tulley and Hogarth say. Petition signers tell lawmakers they’re “appalled at the increasingly violent rhetoric” and actions from the Trump White House. The petition is at www.dailykos/campaigns.
It’s this “drumbeat of war” that energized Daily Kos. Within three hours of posting its petition online at 10 a.m. on June 7, it had gathered more than 84,500 signatures.
Trump dumped the Iran nuclear deal, the petition points out. The predecessor Democratic Obama administration and a group of European nations worked it out to reverse Iran’s march towards developing weapons-grade uranium. Trump dumped the deal because he hates both Iran and Obama. Though the petition does not say so, he also acted at the behest of extreme right-wing nationalist Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. Bolton has agitated for “regime change” in Iran for years.
Trump and Bolton are trying to get the Europeans to drop the deal, unsuccessfully. In the meantime, Trump’s threatening war against Iran, starting with deploying thousands of U.S. service members to the area.
Trump “thinks a conflict with Iran could give him a Gulf War-style popularity boost going into 2020,” the petition says.
“Republican senators like Tom Cotton” of Arkansas “are egging him on — suggesting we can end the war in ‘two strikes.’ But if we go that route, there will be dire consequences =- militarily, economically and diplomatically — that we will be facing for decades.”
“The death toll could make the invasion and occupation of Iraq look minuscule by comparison.”
“We need to stop this rush to war before it begins. The stakes are too high,” the petition concludes.
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