We have all been here before.
We as Jews often say “we’ve been here before” to remind us what happens when rising authoritarianism is not confronted. Today, we as Americans of all faiths and backgrounds can say we’ve collectively been here before — and not that long ago.
Well before Trump, we saw manufactured threats that were used to dizzy this nation into decimating Iraq.1 An interminable war which today is almost unanimously seen as one of the nation’s greatest mistakes.
We saw the insurmountable loss of life in Iraq, paid for by robbing Americans of 4,500 lives, our Constitutional rights, and three trillion dollars.2 We saw a war used to facilitate one of the largest transfers of wealth from our communities into war profiteers in history. We saw that cost match what it would take to permanently house every unhoused American, eliminate food insecurity, provide every single person with health care, free college, and child care, and begin to address reparations.
We saw the war spark chaos on our streets, bring us daily stories of violent anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bigotry. We saw it create a system of extrajudicial internment, like at Guantanamo Bay, and systematically erode our Constitutional liberties with the so-called Patriot Act. And we saw a president, backed by the same antisemitic, right-wing Evangelical Christian movement we see today, seeking to fulfill a fake supremacist prophecy — and use it to expand his power.
What we’ve not seen before: A president threatening all of the above and to cement his goals for permanent dictatorial control. A president armed with a captured Supreme Court and Congress seeking to destroy the power of both as checks on authoritarianism. A president falsely claiming to care about antisemitism, using Jews and Israel as an excuse to shore up his authoritarian agenda — inevitably making Jews and everyone less safe in the process. A president, now using the fog of an unnecessary war, to obscure the fact that he’s installing Marines and National Guard across our cities to protect masked, warrantless, badgeless men who kidnap parents from their children into unmarked vehicles. A president, now facing backlash even from his supporters, seeking to turn their heads away.
The attack on Iran, taken by a president without input from Congress, with its victims almost entirely civilians in Iran and Israel, isn’t ours. Our struggle is to stop policies making families decide between a pediatrician or school clothes, going to work or getting abducted, whether they must cross state lines for a trans child, and how to exercise autonomy over having a family or not. Our struggle is to build a thriving and strong Democracy for all people.
This Shabbat we prayed for a nation that no longer uses forever wars to take everything from us in order to take everything from its victims. This week, we begin again our fight to build an alternative: a nation at peace, where we are safe and thriving because Democracy is safe and thriving.
Sources:
1. “America’s Spies Say Iran Wasn’t Building a Nuclear Weapon. Trump Dismisses That Assessment.,” Associated Press
2. “Blood and Treasure,” Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
