Barbara Lee’s Lonely Vote After 9/11: A Look Back

When Congress passed an Authorization for Use of
Military Force after the 9/11 attacks, virtually every legislator
in Washington voted for it—even Ron Paul, though he
expressed some misgivings. The only “no” vote came from the
California Democrat Barbara Lee, whose district includes such
radical strongholds as Berkeley and Oakland. Thirteen years later,
The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf has
looked back at Lee’s arguments and the reactions they received.
And by “reactions they received,” I mean mail: thousands of letters
that now fill 12 boxes.

Friedersdorf’s article largely consists of quotes from those
letters, whose sentiments range from “To combat terrorism, let’s
act in accordance with a high standard that does not disregard the
lives of people in other countries” to “You should have been in the
Trade Towers you anti-American Bitch. Drop dead!!!”
Friedersdorf also points out that Lee’s position has often
been misunderstood, noting that she “wasn’t saying no to
any use of force against terrorists—rather, she was averse
to giving the president authority so broad that it could be used to
launch any number of wars.” But the part of the article that I want
to highlight comes when he sums up at the end:

Even though a majority now considers the war most
understood the AUMF to authorize to be a mistake; even though it
has been used to justify military interventions that no one
conceived of on September 14, 2001; even though there’s no proof
that any war-making of the last 13 years has made us safer; even
though many more Americans have died in wars of choice than have
been killed in terrorist attacks; even though Lee and many of her
constituents were amenable to capturing or killing the 9/11
perpetrators, not pacifists intent on ruling out any use of force;
despite all of that, Representative Lee is still thought of as a
fringe peacenik representing naive East Bay hippies who could never
be trusted to guide U.S. foreign policy. And the people who utterly
failed to anticipate the trajectory of the War on Terrorism? Even
those who later voted for a war in Iraq that turned out to be among
the most catastrophic in U.S. history are considered sober,
trustworthy experts….

Lee and many letter writers who supported her were far more
prescient in their analysis than Hillary Clinton or John McCain.
Try telling the average American that many Berkeley liberals were
more correct about the War on Terror than those two. They’ll laugh
in your face, even if they personally supported and now oppose
those two wars.

The first sentence in that quote is slightly wrong: I know of no
poll that shows a majority of Americans regretting the
Afghan war. But we’re coming close. As of February, Gallup shows 49
percent of the country thinking “the United States made a mistake
in sending military forces to Afghanistan” and 48 percent thinking
it didn’t. In other words, there is basically an even split, with a
slight plurality tipping toward Lee’s perspective.

Regular Reason readers know I’ve been
mentioning that poll a lot
lately. That is because I remember September 2001 and the
public mood at the time, and I find the shift in public opinion
staggering. When Gallup first polled Americans about the Afghan
war, about two months after Lee’s vote, only 9 percent held the
position that 49 percent do today. We are not all Barbara Lee now,
but Barbara Lee’s perspective has become mainstream—if not in D.C.,
than in the country at large.