Senator Bernie Sanders has proven his foresight in foreign policy.

Sanders has been on the right side of history when he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in opposition to the war in Vietnam. The war lasted over 19 years and left over 58,000 Americans and 1 million Vietnamese dead. The cost to U.S. taxpayers was $168 billion. Despite all that hardship, we lost.

As a member of the House of Representatives, Sanders not only voted against the War in Iraq, he helped lead the opposition against it. Sanders did not believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and he was right. The Iraq War began in 2003 and we still have troops on the ground in Iraq. The war left approximately 5,000 Americans and half a million Iraqis dead with a price tag of over $1 trillion. It was not a popular position at the time, but many would now agree with Bernie that the “war in Iraq turned out to be the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of our country.”

After the U.S. killed Iran General Soleimani, and Trump claimed there was an imminent threat, Sanders stated that a war with Iran would be much more destructive than the Iraq War. Sanders said that he would work as hard as he can across party lines to prevent President Trump from taking us into a war with Iran. There appears to be no evidence of an imminent threat.

My hope for our country is that we do not go into war with Iran. I hope our country will not have to learn, long after American lives are lost and trillions of dollars are spent, that Bernie Sanders was right once again.

Angie Hanson
Albert Lea, MN