“Twenty years ago, Rep. Barbara Lee stood before her House colleagues and pleaded with them not to give President Bush a blank check to wage war against the remote, lawless nation accused of harboring the Sept. 11 terrorists.”
““Let’s just pause, just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control,” she said to them days after the attacks.”
“With the stunning fall of Kabul to the Taliban this week, the Oakland lawmaker has been heralded as an ignored oracle, the only member of Congress to foresee an endless war in Afghanistan that would leave thousands of Americans and Afghans dead.”
“Lee didn’t know in September 2001 that she would be the only no vote on the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that the House approved, 420 to 1, after the attacks that felled the twin towers of the World Trade Center, left the Pentagon billowing in smoke and downed a passenger airplane in Pennsylvania.”
“She didn’t expect that vote to be a career-defining moment, widely praised as an act of political courage.”
“Nor did she anticipate the death threats and vilification that followed for several years.”
“But through it all — the ups and downs of the costly war, the overshadowing of Afghanistan by the subsequent Iraq war, the killing of Osama bin Laden and ultimately the growing acceptance by her colleagues that the battle against the Taliban could never be won — Lee said she never wavered on one thing: the conviction that she was on the right side of history.”
“And Lee didn’t stop with that single vote of disapproval. For two decades she has continued to fight against the war, lobbying members to repeal the military authorization, pestering each new president to wind down the fighting and becoming an antiwar crusader to bring U.S. troops home, and for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority to declare war.”
“Back home, voter support for Lee never wavered. Less than a month after the vote, a crowd of 3,000 cheered her name in downtown Oakland at a rally organized by actor Danny Glover and writer Alice Walker.“
“Since then, Lee has never received less than 81% of the votes cast in her district. In 2020, she was reelected with 90.37%.”
“A year after that fateful vote, the nation’s attention was shifting to the brewing conflict with Iraq.”
“Lee said she soon began to notice a shift in public opinion. Returning veterans and grass-roots activists demanded to know why Congress had provided such open-ended authority to the president. Some of those who once sent her hate mail told Lee they now thought she had been right.”
“Slowly Lee drew allies to her cause. First were two more California Democrats, Reps. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles and Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma.”
“As the Bush administration failed to uncover the long-alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Congress members flocked to join the Out of Iraq Caucus in 2005, including some Republicans, starting with the now-deceased Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina.”
“An increasingly war-weary Congress was joining Lee’s calls for a reduction in troops, with an unusual alliance of antiwar liberals and fiscally conservative Republicans demanding an exit strategy for Afghanistan.”
“About 25% of all House members who took that initial vote remain in office.”
Read more: Road to vindication for California’s Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against Afghanistan war (archived)
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