We’ll
never rebuild this country if we keep wasting money on war.
This Labor Day, like others before it, finds American workers squeezed on many fronts. Inequality is rising, union membership is dwindling, and wages aren’t keeping up with job growth.
Naturally, addressing all those challenges is a huge priority
for the labor movement. But this year, I’d like to add another: protecting the
nuclear deal with Iran.
It makes sense that unions might be concerned with issues like
trade and immigration. But why else should workers worry about how our
government operates outside the United States? Does labor need its own foreign
policy?
Let me put it this way: When you don’t speak up, your default
policy is the status quo.
For most of its first 50 years of existence, the country’s
largest labor federation — the AFL-CIO — never once challenged the deployment
of U.S. troops into foreign conflicts. But it turns out that workers have as
much of a stake in those decisions as anyone.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan together are projected to cost
American taxpayers anywhere from $4
trillion to $6 trillion. And now the war on the Islamic State — a direct
continuation of the last war in Iraq — has already racked up over $5.8
billion in costs, according to the National Priorities Project.
And the tab’s running up at a rate of over $600,000 per hour.
That’s money that isn’t available to put unemployed people back
to work, fix our nation’s failing infrastructure, provide high quality public
education, create a universal Medicare-for-all health care system, build
affordable housing, or help transition to a sustainable, de-militarized
alternative economy, among many other major social needs identified by the
labor movement.
War, in other words, is bad for working people.
That’s why my organization, U.S. Labor Against the War, challenged the AFL-CIO back in 2005 to abandon its silence and oppose the George W. Bush administration’s illegal war in Iraq.
The unions listened — and subsequently called for an end to the
war in Afghanistan, too. Several years later, in 2011, the AFL-CIO executive
council proclaimed its opposition to our nation’s “militarized foreign policy.”
With increasing clarity, unions have come to recognize that a
country that commits over half its
discretionary budget to war spending can’t afford to address
the increasingly pressing needs of its people.
So that brings us to the Iran deal, which was painstakingly
negotiated by the Obama administration and its partners in the United Kingdom,
France, Russia, China, and Germany. It’s been endorsed by over 100 former
diplomats, hundreds of religiousleaders,
scores of distinguished non-proliferation
experts, and numerous members of both the American and Israeli military
and intelligence communities.
But some war hawks in Congress — along with their wealthy
benefactors in the military-industrial complex and international hardliners
like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — are intent on sabotaging the
agreement. If they succeed, they’ll put our country and the world on a fast
track to yet another disastrous military conflict, the costs of which are too
horrific to contemplate.
A war like this wouldn’t just be unaffordable. It would be
illegal and immoral, too. That’s why the labor movement must see to it that
such a conflict never begins.
If you’re in a union, contact your rep and urge them to add
their voice in support of the Obama administration’s negotiated agreement with
Iran. They can sign a statement set up by my organization at bit.ly/IranDeal_LaborSignOn.
Michael
Eisenscher is a co-founder of U.S. Labor
Against the War. He’s a veteran of more than 50 years in the labor
movement and an activist for peace, human rights, and the environment. Distributed by OtherWords.org.