A top Democratic senator on Tuesday had a blunt assessment of why members of his party are out of step with rank-and-file American Democrats across the country on issues of foreign policy, specifically President Trump’s illegal attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Saturday.
During an interview with Sen. Chris Murphy, MSNBC host Chris Hayes pointed to a new poll finding that 56% of Americans disapproved of the airstrikes and that the partisan breakdown showed a whopping 87% of Democrats opposing the attack.
“I gotta say, if you just looked at elected Democratic members of Congress I don’t think you would think the voting members of the party were as overwhelmingly against this strike as they are compared to the people they send to go represent them in Congress,” Hayes told Murphy, asking, “Do you feel like there's a pretty big distance on these kinds of issues, between Democratic voters and democratic electeds?”
“I mean yes,” Murphy quickly responded. “That's because, listen, there is a war industry in this town. There just is. There's a lot of people who make money off of war. The military, I love them, they're capable. But they are always way overly optimistic about what they can do.”
Murphy added that the problem infects both parties, but Americans understand that U.S. military intervention, from Vietnam and Iraq to Afghanistan and Yemen, doesn’t work.
“So the American people get it,” Murphy said. “This town, you know, has, like I said, a degree of optimism and hubris about military action that is derivative of the fact that the war industry spends a lot of money here in Washington telling us that the guns and the tanks and the planes can solve all of our problems.” Watch:
A U.S. Army M113 armored personnel carrier guards a street near the destroyed Panamanian Defense Force headquarters building during the second day of Operation Just Cause, Dec. 20 ,1989. (Dod photo)
General Manuel Noriega is escorted onto American military aircraft by DEA agents shortly after his surrender and arrest in Panama, Jan, 3, 1989. (Public domain/Combined Military Service Digital Photographic Files)
