Of course. I view the moral test as such: “Can liberal-leaning people stick to the generally liberal anti-war mentality even if it means agreeing with Trump?”

I think the response from the mainstream left to this question was, shockingly: “no.” As I cite in my article, the response from the establishment Democrats was very hawkish. The proposed withdrawal of troops was not even countered on the establishment left by arguing, “Yes, let’s remove troops, but let’s replace them with humanitarian efforts aimed at revitalizing communities.”

In a sense, I believe that both the U.S. establishment left and right are so caught up in the military propaganda machine that they cannot fathom that the notion of having troops in a foreign country is not synonymous with helping that country. They may not even view the situation as a moral dilemma because they view the presence of troops, and advocating for peace and stability in foreign nations, as essentially equivalent.

The dilemma is, nonetheless, very present: knowing what we know about the nature of U.S. military involvement in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a stark contrast between being anti-war, and supporting military deployments abroad. We cannot logically reconcile supporting both at the same time.