Most Americans don’t want this war, and among Democratic voters, 89 percent say the United States should not have attacked Iran. Yet with bombs killing Iranian children, all the legislative opposition to Donald Trump’s war that congressional Democrats could manage this week was a feeble procedural, symbolic quibble — in the form of a War Powers resolution by Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky and Democrat Tim Kaine of Virginia — demanding that the president halt the war until Congress has given its permission. On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled Senate voted that down.

The failure of that resolution is the fault of the Republican majority, of course. But for the Democratic tepidity, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York deserves significant blame.

As Aída Chávez reported last week, Democratic Party leadership tried to derail even this pathetic effort to throw sand in the gears of this insane war, making sure to delay the vote until the war was already underway. Schumer and House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries worked to undermine and delay the vote because they knew that the antiwar position was popular with the Democratic base, but they weren’t personally interested in defying the elite security consensus, sources told Chávez.

But Jeffries, for his part, at least has made marginally better public statements, denouncing all recent regime wars as “expensive,” declaring that each of them — Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan — had “failed in their mission.” He said this one had “no justification” and acknowledged that “the American people want us to focus on making their life better, making their life more affordable, not getting involved in another endless war in the Middle East that is going to end in failure.”

Stronger stuff than we got from Schumer, who said, with his characteristic milquetoast mien, that the administration had not provided “critical details” about the threat from Iran. He mentioned that there would be American casualties and the American people didn’t want this war.

It’s better than assent — which is what Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman offered — to a war that has already killed more than a thousand Iranians and at least six Americans, that has driven gas prices up to $3.25 per gallon, and that Trump has already admitted could turn into another “forever” war. But Schumer’s statement is too feeble, especially coming after weeks of simply demanding more information and a better process — and years of bloodthirsty jonesing for exactly this action. To the extent that they do reject Trump’s reckless action, his recent words belie his own role in enabling this war.

Not only did he delay this recent vote on the Iran War Powers resolution, Schumer has long pushed for war with Iran. He not only voted against but also stridently denounced Barack Obama’s peace deal with Iran in 2015, one of the biggest diplomatic triumphs of Obama’s presidency, in which Iran backed off its nuclear weapons development in exchange for sanctions relief. Schumer’s stance put him sharply at odds with then-president Obama, a culmination of a decade of disagreement between the two on how to handle Iran.

“This is our next Senate leader?” Jon Favreau, then Obama’s speechwriter, responded on X in disbelief. Politico reported that Schumer lobbied harder against the 2015 Iran deal than any Republican did.

In a post on Medium at the time, Schumer justified his appalling stance with reasoning that wouldn’t be out of place in Trump’s current administration: the deal involved too much multilateralism and relaxing the sanctions — read: easing the economic suffering of the Iranian people — would deprive the United States of leverage over Iran.

As recently as last summer, Schumer was taunting Trump on Iran from the right, worrying that Trump was “folding” on Iran, using the TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) epithet and urging “no side deals” (by which he meant no agreements without Israel). And the Intercept reported at the time that Schumer tacitly supported bombing Iran.

Now Schumer’s pathetic dithering between legalistic tsk-tsking and warmongering is utterly out of touch, not only with the majority of Democratic and American voters, but even with many of his Democratic colleagues.

Democratic socialist and Palestinian American congresswoman Rashida Tlaib called this “an illegal war of aggression.” Her democratic socialist House colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agreed it was “unlawful.” Democratic socialist senator Bernie Sanders said, “Israel should not be directing American war policy.”

The socialists weren’t alone. Senator Chris Van Hollen, for example, explained why he voted for the resolution: “I’m very angry and upset that the president would put the lives of Americans at risk without having any plan.” Senator Kaine, who was once Hillary Clinton’s running mate, made this much stronger statement:

Has President Trump learned nothing from decades of U.S. meddling in Iran and forever wars in the Middle East? Is he too mentally incapacitated to realize that we had a diplomatic agreement with Iran that was keeping its nuclear program in check, until he ripped it up during his first term?

Despite such language, the lack of leadership from the top of the party has enabled an utter lack of discipline, with Politico reporting Wednesday night that some important Senate Democrats, despite their stated opposition to Trump’s attack on Iran, won’t rule out funding this illegal and pointless war. These include Senate Armed Services Committee members Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, and, unfortunately, Kaine, who has perhaps himself “learned nothing” from past wars.

Also among the wafflers on funding the war are Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Chris Coons of Delaware, who oversees the Senate panel on Pentagon appropriations.

Schumer’s horrible foreign policy stances reflect his close relationship with Israel, which has long been pushing for war with Iran. He’s not alone in that — many of his colleagues get money and foreign policy talking points from that country’s paid lobbyists. But he’s even more deeply in the tank than most.

Even among US senators — a conservative, bought-off, and uninspiring group — Schumer is one of the senators receiving the most funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), taking millions of dollars from Israel PACs. Back in 2010, when then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton — hardly a critic of Israel — complained about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s settlements, Schumer organized two-thirds of the Senate to denounce her and the Obama administration for “confrontational stances toward Israel.”

In other words, Israel is always on his mind. The other day, the Senate Democratic leader made a gaffe that would be comical if people were not dying. Schumer, intending to take both the popular position against the war and radically conflicting hawkish position at the same time, attempted to say that no one wants Iran to have nuclear weapons but also no one wants this war. But what he said by accident was, “No one wants a nuclear Israel, but we don’t want endless war, plain and simple.” When reporters laughed, he said, “What did I say?” Of course, he then hastened to clarify.

Time to exit the stage, Chuck.