As news reports circulated that Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had been killed in US and Israeli airstrikes on Tehran, anti-war protesters gathered across the United States, including outside the White House and in New York’s Times Square to voice opposition to US military involvement in the region.
“It wasn’t sanctioned by Congress, so what Trump is doing is on his own terms, it’s making him a fascist and it’s making the country into a fascist state,” said Sue Johnson, a protester.
Trump, she added, “just couldn’t wait. He’s such an impatient child. He’s like, ‘Well ICE didn’t work, so let’s go stir things up in the Middle East. He bombed Iran for no specific reason.”
“No president can attack or kidnap or bomb another country without the permission of the Congress,” she said, but conceded that “it’s irrelevant what Congress thinks because this president goes and does whatever he wants to do to any country.”
That sense of fait accompli that accompanies recent Trump administration foreign policy actions, including the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, permeated the New York gathering of several hundred protesters.