Mike Pence voted for the Iraq War
In 2002, then Rep. Mike Pence voted in favor of the Iraq War along with Hillary Clinton.
It’s a good reminder to look back and remember that there where numerous conservatives warning about what would happen in Iraq. Mike Pence should have known better.
Here’s Rep. Ron Paul with a slightly different take:
FLASHBACK from 2003: Conservatives Against a War with Iraq
Most people do not realize how many conservatives are against going to war in Iraq.
A strong majority of nationally-syndicated conservative columnists have come out against this war. Just three of many examples I could give include the following:
Charley Reese, a staunch conservative, who was selected a couple of years ago as the favorite columnist of C-Span viewers, wrote that a U.S. attack on Iraq: “is a prescription for the decline and fall of the American empire. Overextension – urged on by a bunch of rabid intellectuals who wouldn’t know one end of a gun from another – has doomed many an empire. Just let the United States try to occupy the Middle East, which will be the practical result of a war against Iraq, and Americans will be bled dry by the costs in both blood and treasure.”
Paul Craig Roberts, who was one of the highest-ranking Treasury Department officials under President Reagan and now a nationally-syndicated conservative columnist, wrote: “an invasion of Iraq is likely the most thoughtless action in modern history.”
James Webb, a hero in Vietnam and President Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy, wrote: “The issue before us is not whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years.”
It is a traditional conservative position to be against huge deficit spending.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a very short war followed by a five-year occupation of Iraq would cost the U.S. $272 billion, this on top of an estimated $350 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year.
It is a traditional conservative position to be against the U.S. being the policeman of the world. That is exactly what we will be doing if we go to war in Iraq…