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with Iranian peace activists from Miles for Peace on my trip to Iran shortly before the last presidential election in 2009

The prospects for peace with Iran got a little bit brighter this week.

The Iranian public defied expectations and roundly defeated conservative candidates to put moderate Hassan Rouhani in office. [1] The people of Iran sent a message by electing a president who campaigned on reconciliation.

Now we need to make sure our government hears that message. Tell Congress to take advantage of this new opportunity for diplomacy with Iran. 

Having a new president in Iran doesn’t mean all of our problems are solved and diplomacy will be easy. There is still a lot of work to be done. But this is the best opportunity we’ve had in years to start with a clean slate and engage in the give and take of productive diplomacy.

The hawks are already trying to downplay the election results so they can continue their agenda of hostility. They will be telling Congress to ignore the potential for peace and continue with their ill-advised plans to ramp up sanctions. Greeting the new president with even greater sanctions will poison the waters, for no real gain.

We can’t risk squandering this real opportunity for peace. Tell your representative and senators to hold off on sanctions and give diplomacy room to succeed.

After the violence and turmoil of the last Iranian election, it’s a joy to see the people of Iran celebrating in the streets after Friday’s election. It would be tragic to sully their victory by blocking the path to peace. Take action now. 

Next January, a more pro-peace Congress will hear our voices. We have a Senate that is far more likely to pass important treaties. We have new members of the House who were swept into office by voters who want a real end to our decade of war.

We couldn’t have done this without you. You saw the stakes in this election and stepped up to help pro-peace candidates. Thanks to you, we raised nearly $30,000 for our slate of candidates, sent four organizers to some of the most competitive races in the country, and contacted thousands of voters.

Here’s a rundown of how Peace Action West’s endorsed candidates fared last night:

Victories

• Raul Grijalva (AZ-3) The Progressive Caucus Co-Chair and leading voice for peace in the House defeated Republican Gabriela Sauceda Mercer 57% to 39%.
• Jared Huffman (CA-2) Huffman has big shoes to fill, taking the seat vacated by antiwar leader Rep. Lynn Woolsey. He heads to the House with a strong mandate, winning over Republican Dan Roberts by 40 points.
• John Garamendi (CA-3) Republicans added challenger Kim Vann to their “Young Guns” program, hoping to unseat House Armed Services Committee member John Garamendi. Thankfully, we’ll continue to have Rep. Garamendi’s leadership in the House on ending the war in Afghanistan and cutting wasteful military spending, as he won 54% to 46%.
• Barbara Lee (CA-13) This race showed how the true the “Barbara Lee Speaks for Me” signs we see around this district really are, as progressive hero Lee won reelection with 86% of the vote.
• Mark Takano (CA-41) This new seat in Riverside created an opportunity to get a new progressive face in Congress from the Inland Empire. Takano defeated his opponent John Tavaglione 56% to 44%.
• Janice Hahn (CA-44) This race was a product of California’s new top two primary system, pitting two Democratic incumbents against each other. Hahn, who has been an outspoken opponent of the war in Afghanistan since her election in 2009, won with 60% of the vote.
• Steve Horsford (NV-4) Nevada added a new district in 2012, and pro-peace candidate Horsford will join the NV delegation in January, winning against Danny Tarkanian 50% to 42%.
• Suzanne Bonamici (OR-1) Bonamici won a special election to fill Rep. David Wu’s seat in January of 2012, and had to jump right in to another primary in May and the general election in November. We will continue to have her pro-peace votes in Congress as she won with 60% of the vote.
• Suzan DelBene (WA-1) This newly redrawn open seat in Washington is one of the most closely divided in the country. DelBene won over tea party Republican John Koster 54% to 46%.

Losses

• Richard Carmona (AZ-Sen) Carmona had an uphill battle taking on Republican Jeff Flake in red Arizona, and through his dogged campaigning he turned this into a tossup race. In the end, Flake won 50% to 45%.
• Pete Stark (CA-15) Pete Stark has been a wonderful ally for the peace movement through his four decades in Congress. Thanks to the top-two primary system, Stark ran against another Democrat, Eric Swalwell, who defeated Stark 53% to 47%.
• John Hernandez (CA-21) Hernandez jumped in to try to fill a Central Valley open seat, in an area that has traditionally been favorable to Republicans. Republican David Valadao won with 60% of the vote.
• Lee Rogers (CA-25) Rogers took on one of the peace movement’s biggest antagonists in Congress, House Armed Services Committee Chair Buck McKeon. His committed grassroots campaigning made the race more competitive than many expected, losing to McKeon 45% to 55%.
• Joe Miklosi (CO-6) Miklosi took on tea party Republican Mike Coffman, whose district became more Democratic due to redistricting, making the race a tossup. Miklosi managed to keep Coffman under 50%, but unfortunately narrowly lost the race 49% to 45%.

As committed activists, we know our work is far from over. We must push President Obama to take his foreign policy in a bolder direction in his second term. New members of Congress need to be educated about foreign policy decisions they’ve never had to make before. Pro-peace voters need to show that we are still engaged and will keep raising our voices to end wars, reinvest wasteful Pentagon spending in our communities, and put peaceful solutions first.

We always knew it wasn’t just about winning elections. While it is disappointing that some of our favorite candidates won’t be heading to DC in January, our victories last night mean we can step into 2013 with new opportunities on the horizon, and new partners for peace in Congress to take advantage of those opportunities. Thank you for making it possible.

Retaliation against US personnel overseas. $8-a-gallon gas. A spreading Middle East War. An Iranian regime driven to pursue a nuclear weapon.

Experts recognize all of these as likely consequences of a military attack on Iran. Most people of sound mind are not gunning for a military confrontation with Iran, as much as they might throw around “all options on the table” rhetoric.

Unfortunately, despite all the potential consequences, several major players in US-Iran relations have made counterproductive moves that undermine diplomacy and push us forward on the path toward war.

I have railed against Congress many times on this issue, as their actions on Iran are usually far more likely to hurt the situation than help. The Senate lived up to those expectations last week by passing, 90-1, a resolution that rejects the possibility of containing a “nuclear weapons capable” Iran. As we pointed out when the House took up this bill, this is a dangerous move that sets a vague red line for military action. The legislation does not offer a definition of what a nuclear weapons capability is—by some definitions, Iran could already be there. This votes comes at an especially sensitive time on this issue, essentially putting the Senate in agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rather than President Obama, who has set his red line at an actual nuclear weapon.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who had been somewhat vague about his view of where this red line should be, shifted to the Netanyahu/Congress position on a call with American rabbis:

“With regards to the red line, I would imagine Prime Minister Netanyahu is referring to a red line over which if Iran crossed it would take military action. And for me, it is unacceptable or Iran to have the capability of building a nuclear weapon, which they could use in the Middle East or elsewhere,” Romney said. “So for me, the red line is nuclear capability. We do not want them to have the capacity of building a bomb that threatens ourselves, our friends, and the world.”

“Exactly where those red lines [should be drawn] is something which, I guess, I wouldn’t want to get into in great detail, but you understand they are defined by the Iranian capability to have not only fissile material, but bomb making capability and rocketry,” Romney said.

Romney already demonstrated that he shouldn’t be anywhere near Iran policy with his spectacularly ignorant comments on Iran in the infamous fundraiser video:

If I were Iran, and a crazed fanatic, I’d say let’s get a little fissile material to Hezbollah, have them carry it to Chicago or some other place, and then if anything goes wrong or if America starts acting up, we’ll just say, “Guess what, unless you stand down, why we’re gonna let off a dirty bomb.” This is where we head, where American can be held up and blackmailed by Iran, by the mullahs, by crazy people. So we really don’t have any option but to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon.

If we’re going to live in Mitt Romney’s fantasy world where you need a nuclear weapons program to make a dirty bomb and the Iranian regime has no instincts for self-preservation, we can probably just call Jack Bauer to clean it all up and save the day. If we’re dealing with reality, we are going to need an actual understanding of the issues and better policy proposals than being tougher and refusing to apologize.

While Barack Obama at least seems to have a much firmer grasp on that reality, and has helpfully pushed back against “loose talk of war,” his administration committed a major blunder last week that also pushed us toward military confrontation. After an extensive lobbying campaign that spent thousands of dollars buying high profile support from people like Rudy Giuliani and Howard Dean, the State Department removed the Mujahedin-al-Khalq from the list of foreign terrorist organizations. The MEK has killed Americans and Iranians in the past, and has no legitimacy within Iran as an opposition group. Robert Wright explains why what might seem like a bureaucratic detail is so detrimental to a peaceful resolution of tensions with Iran:

A government official said the U.S. will remove the “terrorist” label from the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, a group that got onto the list of terrorist organizations decades ago by, among other things, killing Americans. I’ve argued before that such a “delisting” of MEK would empower hardliners in Iran who want to block a negotiated solution of the nuclear issue. After all, not only is MEK devoted to overthrowing the Iranian government, and not only did it side with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war–MEK has recently, according to NBC News , served as Israel’s proxy in murdering Iranian scientists. So America’s delisting of MEK will be used by Iranian hardliners as evidence that America is too hostile to be a reliable negotiating partner–just as American hawks highlight evidence of Iranian hostility to argue that negotiations are futile.

If government officials truly want to avoid war with Iran (and I believe most of them do), it’s not enough to just say military action is a last resort. They must actively promote alternative policies that can resolve the conflict (and at the very least not undermine them). We don’t want them finding themselves suddenly backed into a corner by their own rhetoric and short-sighted actions, left with no options but the dangerous and expensive military one.

Click here to tell your senators and representative to oppose military action against Iran. 

In the midst of a heated debate about cutting the deficit and reducing the bloated Pentagon budget, President Obama hit on a message we have been hammering for years:

And while my opponent would spend more money on military hardware that our Joint Chiefs don’t even want, I’ll use the money we’re no longer spending on war to pay down our debt and put more people back to work – rebuilding roads and bridges; schools and runways. After two wars that have cost us thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars, it’s time to do some nation-building right here at home.

Bringing balance to the federal budget, so that wasteful military programs aren’t eating up money that could be spent to improve our lives and help our most vulnerable, needs to be a top priority. You made that priority clear in voting overwhelmingly to pressure the candidates to address this very issue at the conventions.  Thank you to the thousands of you who took action.

While the Obama administration has stopped requesting money for some wasteful weapon systems (to the chagrin of many in Congress who keep throwing money at them), the budget plans he has put forth thus far would also increase military spending every year. It’s a far cry from Romney’s ludicrous plan to hit more than $800 billion in military spending by the end of the next decade, but it is still merely slowing the rate of growth of the bloated military budget rather than seriously reining it in.

With a deal to avert automatic spending cuts pending, we need to act to get President Obama, the Democratic Party, and Republican budget hawks to walk the walk.

President Obama also reiterated his plan to end the war in Afghanistan:

We’ve blunted the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over…My opponent said it was “tragic” to end the war in Iraq, and he won’t tell us how he’ll end the war in Afghanistan. I have, and I will.

The problem, of course, is that he hasn’t. This point is (deliberately) confusing, and not just to some voters—the media seems a bit unclear on this as well. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, President Obama has not delivered a clear plan to end the war.

At the end of this month, the 33,000 surge troops will come home from Afghanistan, leaving 68,000 troops on the ground. That means Obama’s first term will end with double the number of troops in the country as when he was inaugurated. He has yet to offer details on the withdrawals between now and 2014, other than saying they will continue at a “steady pace.” There are contradictory signals coming from the military, however, and House Republicans codified language supporting a plan to plateau at 68,000 troops for the next 2 years in their version of the National Defense Authorization Act.

The other major issue is that the administration clearly intends to have troops on the ground after 2014. Can you say a war is over when there are 10,000-20,000 troops leaving their families behind to serve in Afghanistan? Again, we don’t have details on troop levels or timeline, but the US-Afghan Strategic Partnership agreement leaves the door open to troops on the ground until 2024. The next step will be to negotiate a detailed Status of Forces Agreement, which will dictate conditions for a US military presence and troop numbers. While the SOFA ultimately led to complete withdrawal from Iraq, it will take serious pressure to get the same result from an Afghanistan SOFA.

President Obama’s aggressive promotion of a plan to end the war in Afghanistan is a testament to the mobilization of activists around the country who have helped shift the political climate on Afghanistan drastically over the last few years, and allies in Congress who have kept the drumbeat going (as Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) pointed out at the convention). Now we have to show that we are still paying attention to this issue and keep pushing for all of our troops to come home.

Democratic timidity around foreign policy issues has been one impediment to making progress on the pro-peace agenda, so seeing the party embrace leadership in this realm can be a positive step forward. That’s especially true when part of that strong leadership is embodied in rhetoric about ending wars and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

It’s unfortunate, however, that it also means embracing much of the war on terror rhetoric and the devastating policies that go along with it. Foreign Policy magazine tracked Osama bin Laden references at the DNC, and found 21 (20 more than at the RNC). The most notable was probably Sen. John Kerry’s “Ask Osama bin Laden if he’s better off than he was four years ago,” to my mind a nauseating line that could have been delivered in a bad action movie, evoking some of the beer-chugging celebrations that greeted bin Laden’s demise.

President Obama said in his speech, “I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. We have.” This supposed laser focus on terrorists, however, has swept up a lot of innocents in its wake. As Micah Zenko notes when commenting on criteria the administration supposedly uses for drone strikes, “The claim that the 3,000+ people killed in roughly 375 nonbattlefield targeted killings were all engaged in actual operational plots against the U.S. defies any understanding of the scope of what America has been doing for the past ten years.”

We need to continue to push for an embrace of foreign policy leadership that leaves behind the tragic and misguided war on terror. As Spencer Ackerman notes on the Danger Room blog, the speech lacked a vision for future engagement in global affairs. How exciting would it be to hear the president articulate a foreign policy vision based on cooperation, diplomacy, and shrinking our military budget to actually be relevant to the threats we face?

The next president will make crucial decisions on everything from nuclear weapons to Afghanistan to dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. The conventions gave us a small glimpse into their thinking. Next we have a series of debates that will force the candidates to go more in-depth. No matter what, we know we will always be called to mobilize and keep pushing for a better and smarter foreign policy.

What did you think of President Obama’s statements on foreign policy in last night’s speech? Let us know in the comments.

Now that you’ve helped us choose, will you click here to send our question to the Obama and Romney campaigns?

Many of you eloquently expressed your outrage at the amount of money this country spends on war. Here’s what some of you had to say:

“I cannot comprehend why we need to spend more than all other countries combined on our military.”

“It makes no sense to increase military spending during a time of economic depression and with so many people out of work.”

“Our military approach to maintaining international superiority is a dead end… [and] is draining us in terms of our young men and women and our wealth.”

“Plain and simple, we need to reduce our military spending and increase our domestic welfare, education, infrastructure investment and health care spending. When are we going to start?”

We are at a very unique place in the debate on US military spending, and that makes now the right time to push. As Jon said in his email on Tuesday:

This is a fascinating time for supporters of cutting Pentagon spending. While Mitt Romney routinely brags in his stump speeches about his plans to increase military spending, the Obama campaign has been running ads attacking Mitt Romney for endorsing increases in military spending.For the first time in many years, support for jacking up military spending may be becoming a political liability.

The irony is that President Obama’s own budget also increases military spending, just not at the rate that Romney would. Polls are showing that there is a new and growing awareness among voters that bloated military spending is draining much-needed funds from our economy, while not increasing our security.

The Republican convention will be next week, and the Democratic convention the week after. That means both candidates will be making major speeches. Please click here to let them know that we expect them to lay out their visions for military spending, and if and when real reductions will take place.

This of course does not mean our work on any of these issues will slow down. For those of you who chose differently, we heard you loud and clear. Many of you were frustrated about the war in Afghanistan, and many pointed out the dangers of our nuclear stockpile. Also, preventing war with Iran topped the list of concerns named by the 6 percent of our supporters who chose “other.” Our campaigns on all of these issues will continue to build, and it’s wonderful to know we have you all standing with us.

Last week, Republican hawks blocked a vote on legislation to end the war because they knew it had a real chance of passing. It’s outrageous, and another sign that we need to build up the pro-peace majority in Congress.

For three of our pro-peace challengers, it all comes down to the primary on June 5th. Every dollar will count. Can you donate $15 to help these candidates in their final grassroots push before the primary? 

President Obama announced a few weeks ago his plan to leave the door open to keeping thousands of troops on the ground in Afghanistan until 2024. That’s why we need Norman Solomon bringing his years of peace activism to California’s 2nd district. We need progressive Lori Saldaña to kick out pro-war Rep. Brian Bilbray in the 52nd district in San Diego. We need Franke Wilmer, a state legislator and scholar of war and peace, to fill Montana’s only House seat.

Help elect these strong pro-peace leaders who will fight to bring our troops home. Click here to donate to our challengers in these last critical days. 

Other candidates in these races may be sitting on piles of money. But our candidates have the power of the people.

Show them the peace movement has their back by donating to Norman, Lori and Franke today.

Norman Solomon wanted us to share this message with Peace Action West supporters. Raul Grijalva is a progressive champion and another of our endorsed candidates for 2012.

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) joined the fringiest of the fringe this week with the comments he chose as a rousing closer to a fundraising speech (see the above video for the full local news report):

“I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States or not. But I do know this. That in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.”

A supporter of Coffman’s, seeing nothing wrong with this statement, posted the audio on YouTube, offering us a glimpse of what he says behind closed doors. It’s a stark reminder that some people can get elected to office despite buying into xenophobia-inspired conspiracy theories and grotesque ideas about who decides what people deserve to be deemed American.

Thankfully for people in Colorado’s 6^th district, Coffman is vulnerable this election year. Peace Action West supporters can help elect Joe Miklosi, a wonderful pro-peace candidate who will represent smarter foreign policy values, and clearly bring more dignity and rationality to the office. Let’s show Coffman the cost of engaging in the lowest politics. Click here to donate to Joe Miklosi’s grassroots campaign. 

• Supporters Riley and Becky Newman have put together a really helpful chart on Senate races around the country, and are generously sharing it with people who want to know all the key info- who are the candidates, how much have they raised, who’s endorsed them, and more. Click here to download the PDF.
• Cook Political Report is constantly updating its ratings on how competitive House and Senate races are.
• The FEC’s campaign finance portal lets you see how much money candidates have raised and who is funding their campaign.
• The blogosphere is full of interesting analysis and on-the-ground updates, from Nate Silver to Talking Points Memo to Roll Call and more.

Of course, if you’re looking for peace candidates who have been vetted for their support of a foreign policy based on diplomacy, smart security spending, and reducing the nuclear threat, visit Peace Action West’s 2012 election center. Our list of peace candidates is constantly growing, so check back to see how you can help us build the peace vote in Congress.