As Donald Trump threatens Iran, where are the Hong-Kong-style mass protests in the US?
- Unlike Hongkongers who challenged their government with large-scale protests this month, the US has not seen major demonstrations over the American president’s threats of military action against North Korea and Iran
Many unaffiliated American voters had doubts about US President Donald Trump’s leadership at a time of calamity, but thought the generals around him would guide him appropriately.
There was no groundswell of demands that The New York Times and The Washington Post dedicate more coverage to fact-checking the administration’s claims about the North or describe war scenarios in detail.
Were there any large-scale protests in Washington against a potential strike that could spiral into conflagration? Dream on.
US allies in the region aren’t ringing the alarm bells because many have their own stakes in seeing the influence of the region’s major Shia power diminish. Mojahedin-e-Khalq, an Iranian opposition group that was once on the US terrorism registry, lobbies a bipartisan coalition of former officials, Bolton included, to call for regime change.
And Trump, while he says he does not want a war with Iran, again appears content to engage in a high-stakes contest of wills with a country whose inner workings he does not understand. One miscalculation by either side could mean disaster.
But they need to ask what it would mean if Iran did commit the attack on the ships, as accused. What would be a proportionate response? Would the consequences of war with Iran be any less terrible? To what extent was this action provoked by this administration’s maximum pressure campaign?
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But Americans are hesitant to do the same. So what if their country sleepwalks into a wholly unnecessary conflagration?
They should crowd the streets of Washington until the administration lowers the temperature. Make Mike Pompeo and John Bolton’s commute to work inconvenient. Send a message to the world that Americans don’t want war. Until you do, Hongkongers are putting you to shame.
Rob York is a production editor at the Post and a PhD candidate in Korean history at the University of Hawaii