New Mexico leaders, protesters react swiftly to Iran strikes

Bob Anderson has stood outside Kirtland Air Force Base before, protesting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan some two decades ago.

On Saturday, the 81-year-old Air Force veteran was back on the same stretch of sidewalk, this time reacting to U.S. and Israeli strikes in Iran that had unfolded only hours earlier.

“Oh, god, here we go again,” said Anderson, the co-director of the local anti-war group, Stop the War Machine, and a service member during the Vietnam War. “This could be really bad.”

Anderson was not alone in that sentiment. Dozens of others from his group and the local Party for Socialism and Liberation joined Anderson in protest near the base’s Truman Gate. They held printed and handmade signs that read, “Stop the war on Iran” and “Congress must stop this” as cars passed by.

The protest was just one piece of a larger local response. By Saturday afternoon, U.S. officials had confirmed the strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with other top Iranian officials.

New Mexico’s all-Democratic congressional delegation was quick to respond, with every member calling the strikes illegal and unauthorized.

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a statement early Saturday — before President Donald Trump announced the strikes had killed Khamenei — saying the attack had broken a Trump campaign promise “to end wars, not start them.”

He said the move was putting “American service members and an untold number of civilians in harm’s way.”

“And he has done it without (a) strategy or a clear definition of success,” Heinrich said. “I take real issue with Iran’s leadership, their attacks against their own citizens, and their threats in words and actions toward America. But President Trump’s actions are dangerously reckless.”

U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján took his comments a step further, blaming congressional Republicans for blocking “Congress from upholding its constitutional role.”

“Americans have made it clear they do not want to be dragged into another war by this President,” Luján said. “In the buildup to this attack, President Trump has neither been straight with the American people nor presented a clear plan on what the Administration hopes to achieve by launching this illegal attack.”

While demanding transparency from the Trump administration on what its “long-term strategy is in Iran,” U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez said he stood with the Iranian people seeking freedom from what he called an “oppressive regime.”

Still, “this Administration’s unilateral military escalation doesn’t just risk the lives of our service members and a wider regional conflict — it also violates our Constitution, which grants the power to declare war to Congress, not any one President,” Vasquez said.

Not everyone in New Mexico’s political sphere shared that opposition. Republican Party of New Mexico Chairwoman Amy Barela supported the strikes, saying Operation Epic Fury “makes the world, the United States, and New Mexico much safer as it ensures Iran will never obtain a nuclear weapon.”

“I hope all leaders in New Mexico support this action by the Trump administration and see it for what it is: a necessary step to creating peace across the globe,” Barela said.

Not all did.

Back near Kirtland, Jason Santos, a 27-year-old organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said, “People are pissed right now” about the attacks.

“And rightfully so,” said Santos. “It’s one thing after another this whole year — last year, too, but especially this year with the kidnapping of (former Venezuelan) President (Nicolas) Maduro, with the blockade on Cuba, ICE killing people on our streets.”

Donovan Glasgow, also an organizer, described the frustration that drove people out to the Saturday protest as an attack on the working class.

“It’s not going to be the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful who get sent to die for this war — it’s going to be the working-class kids from poor backgrounds,” said Glasgow, 28. “We’ve seen this time and time again with wars in the Middle East.”

Glasgow even took it a step further, saying both major U.S. parties share some responsibility for what had transpired in Iran.

“These two parties both agree on foreign policy,” he said. “We’re not seeing Democrat politicians strongly opposing this. We’re just seeing opposition from the grassroots and from the people.”

Julie Beckel, who had protested with Anderson all those years ago in front of Kirtland, tied the latest strikes to what she described as a yearslong pattern of wars fought for corporate profit.

“The only people who have benefited are a handful of wealthy shareholders and defense contractors,” Beckel said. “The reality is, endless war is going to continue no matter which party gains power, because the people running both parties and this country are the tiny handful of billionaires… who control every aspect of our lives and rule this country.”

Pointing across the street, Beckel argued that the money the U.S. spends on defense could be better spent on serving the homeless and providing better health care benefits for veterans.

“When poor people get food assistance, they get SNAP, they get EBT — we call that welfare,” Beckel said. “But you know, when we give Lockheed Martin billions of dollars so that Israel can have bombs to drop on babies, we don’t call that welfare, even though it’s hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Anderson had spoken to the protesters as the demonstration began winding down. He said it was when he served in the Air Force during the Vietnam War that he realized “our leaders in our government are lying to us.”

“This war is illegal,” Anderson said. “We have no democracy. We have no constitution in our country right now, and I just want to say that we’re in a dangerous situation, because anything can happen.”

You can reach Matthew Narvaiz at mnarvaiz@abqjournal.com.