The more controversial the Bush-Cheney administration’s war in Iraq proved to be, the more Republicans tried to push back against public criticism in a deeply ugly way: To criticize the mission, leading GOP voices said, was to be unpatriotic. Phrases such as “fifth columnists” were used carelessly and frequently as part of a broader partisan effort to stifle dissent.
More than two decades later, with another Republican administration launching another war in the Middle East, the discourse has yet to reach a comparable point. But just a few days into the military conflict, there are already discouraging signs pointing in a familiar direction.
Late Monday afternoon, for example, Donald Trump published an item to his social media platform that said Democratic critics of his Iran policy are motivated solely by knee-jerk partisanship. “These people are SICK, CRAZY, and DEMENTED,” the president wrote.
About an hour earlier, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama appeared on Newsmax and went much further, arguing in reference to the U.S. service members who have been killed, “The Democrats up here, they could care less.”
But arguably the best example came on Monday night, when Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana sat down with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and argued that Democrats have “defended” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the U.S. and Israeli military offensive in Iran.
Asked to support the claim, the GOP senator pointed to comments from a New York Times editorial and a former campaign aide to a Democratic senator.
Sheehy, in other words, couldn’t name any Democratic officials who have defended Khamenei, but he apparently thought it would be a good idea to push the smear anyway.
If recent history is any guide, such talk is likely to become more common in the very near future, but if Republicans are counting on this to be an effective political tactic, they’re likely to be disappointed for the most obvious of reasons: Trump’s war in Iran is already unpopular.
When the war in Iraq began around this time 23 years ago, there was considerable public support for the mission, which made it easier for GOP officials and operatives to try at least to apply patriotism tests to their domestic foes. This week, however, there’s already evidence to suggest Americans are not on board with the war in Iran.
The more proponents of the policy try to argue that true patriots support the mission in Iran, the more they’ll confront Americans who (a) oppose the war; and (b) are unlikely to question their own patriotism.
