In the modern era, it was probably George W. Bush who first said it out loud and then acted on it: When you’re unpopular and losing politically, just start a little war that’s easily winnable and you’ll be back on top.
As he told his biographer, Mickey Herskowitz, in 1999 about his plans for an Iraq war as a strategy to get himself reelected in 2004:
One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of (Kuwait), and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed I want to get passed, and I'm going to have a successful presidency.
It worked for Bush, although history hasn’t been kind to him as a result. Donald Trump’s second presidency, meanwhile, has been an unmitigated disaster, both in real terms and politically as his approval ratings have slipped so far underwater they’re in late-years Richard Nixon territory:
- Inflation is up, and the tariffs aren’t bringing jobs home.
- Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires bill is in trouble.
- The GOP war on our schools and libraries is creating a huge backlash.
- Women are dying—and furious—because of red state abortion bans.
- Armed thugs are kidnapping people off the streets without warrants or due process.
- Those same immigration raids are causing food to rot in our fields.
- Trump’s destruction of USAID has already killed an estimated 300,000 poor children and handed Africa and parts of Asia to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
- Despite Elon Musk’s claims, the Epstein files are still hidden.
- Nobody except billionaires wants Trump to sell off our public lands.
- The housing crisis is worsening.
- Trump’s cuts to Social Security and Medicare are creating havoc for people trying to sign up.
- Putin has made a fool of Trump as he continues his murderous campaign against Ukraine.
- Musk now knows every penny you’ve ever earned and every drug you’ve ever taken.
- Republicans are on a national purge of voter rolls in blue cities in red states.
- Between 5 and 10 million people showed up to protest Trump’s fascist policies.
So, why not follow Bush’s advice and launch a “little war”? It worked for Ronald Reagan with Grenada and Bush with Iraq: What could possibly go wrong?
After all, when America goes to war—be it Korea in June of 1950, Vietnam in April of 1965, Kosovo in January of 1999, or Afghanistan and Iraq in October of 2001 and March of 2003 respectively—Americans always rally around the flag, the military, and the commander in chief.
At least initially.
Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to get an American president to attack Iran so his jeremiad wouldn’t be a lonely one since he tried to strong-arm Bill Clinton in the 1990s; he finally found one who’d go along with him.
Which is not to say the Iranian regime doesn’t deserve some serious comeuppance.
On more than one occasion I’ve been in Israel when Iranian-funded suicide bombers killed innocent civilians, and their “Death to the Jews” rhetoric has gotten really old. Not to mention Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s having looted Iran to the tune of $95 billion, an amount that makes kleptocrats like Putin and Trump seem like pikers.
But does any of that make this America’s war?
And, if it is, shouldn’t Congress have a say in the decision like our Constitution requires? Article 1, Section 8 says, after all:
The Congress shall have Power… To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.
There isn’t a single mention in Article II, which covers the presidency, of that person having any decision-making power over war and peace; as commander-in-chief he’s required to follow the dictates—or at least permissions—of Congress.
Which is why Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Clinton, and both Bushes all went to Congress to get authorization for dropping bombs on other countries, and President Obama used Bush’s bipartisan congressional Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) to legitimize his attacks on Libya and elsewhere.
Trump has no such authority, and he’s not even claiming authorization via the AUMF; unlike every previous president he hasn’t provided a legal rationalization for the attack.
The War Powers Act requires Congress get at least a 48-hour notice. Trump did none of that; he’s daring Congress to challenge his authority to act unilaterally, and all about a handful of Republicans have already rolled over.
As Democratic Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois said, echoing AOC’s call for Trump’s impeachment because of his failure to follow the law:
No president has the authority to bomb another country that does not pose an imminent threat to the U.S. without the approval of Congress.
Congressmen Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) agreed, saying, respectively:
“While President Trump’s decision may prove just, it’s hard to conceive a rationale that’s Constitutional,” and “This is not Constitutional.”
It’s also important to point out that President Obama had worked out a 2015 deal with Iran (the JCPOA) and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as Germany and the European Union.
Iran upheld the deal, even maintaining it for a year after Trump pulled the U.S. out and it collapsed. They did away with 97% of their enriched uranium (from 10,000 kilograms to a mere 300), dismantled two-thirds of their centrifuges, capped their enrichment at 3.67% (the level needed to fuel nuclear power plants), allowed International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors unlimited access to all their nuclear sites, and committed to maintaining the system for 25 years.
The deal eliminated, in large part, Netanyahu’s rationalization for his perennial call for other nations to bomb Iran; odds are he’s the one who convinced Trump to tear the JCPOA up. Had Trump not gone along with him, today’s situation would be vastly different.
By defying the law—the Constitution, the War Powers Act, and the AUMF—and simply bombing Iran without any consultation whatsoever, he’s also pulling a dictator stunt,
But here we are. With almost 50,000 U.S. troops within easy range of Iranian missiles. And to crank the fury quotient in Iran up to 11, Trump himself is now explicitly calling for a Bush-Iraq-style regime change.
One pro-bombing argument that Trump’s war hawks have made is that we’re aiding Ukraine against Russia, so why shouldn’t we aid Israel? Both, after all, are democracies that largely share what have come to be known as “American values.” And, in fact, we’ve been providing Ukraine with pretty much the same type of support as Israel (at least prior to the Trump presidency) including weaponry, advice, and intelligence, albeit on a much smaller scale.
But America hasn’t bombed Russia like we just did Iran; by directly bombing those nuclear facilities, we’ve destroyed any rationalization that we’re merely “helping an ally.”
And Iran is highlighting that, as is their ally, Russia.
Former Russian President Medvedev (and Putin right-hand-man), noting that these attacks will just make the Iranian leadership more popular with their own rally-around-the-flag effect, just tweeted an ominous threat:
A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads.
Keep in mind, Iran’s supplied Putin’s army with thousands of deadly drones for use in Ukraine. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced yesterday that today he’ll be in Moscow to “consult with each other and coordinate our positions.”
As I noted in the Saturday Report, Putin had advised Trump against this move, in no small part because Russia has over 600 nuclear scientists in Iran and has made billions building one Iranian nuclear reactor with contracts on the books to build seven or eight more. The two countries are allies, and Iran is—more than any other country—helping Russian oil exports get around U.S. and U.N. sanctions.
While it’s unlikely this will rupture Trump’s lapdog-like slavish adoration of and deference to Putin—there’s clearly something going on there that goes back years if not decades—if Russia or North Korea supplies Iran with tactical nukes it could signal a major change in the world balance of power.
And don’t forget that China is also an explicit ally of both nations and has a military that is second only to ours (and quickly overtaking us).
That could end up looking like the allies-axis conflict of the 1940s, and we all know how bloody that ended up.
On the other hand, when Trump killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on January 3, 2020, Iran’s response was relatively mild. Five days later, they threw a few missiles into the al-Asad air base in Iraq, injuring over 100 U.S. soldiers. Trump downplayed their wounds, calling the traumatic brain injuries “a few headaches,” and the issue pretty much died.
Odds are Trump’s betting history will repeat itself, and he may well be right; Iran’s Supreme Leader would probably rather luxuriate in the billions he’s stolen from his people than confront our military—along with Israel’s—head-on. Not to mention Trump’s tendency to TACO—cutting and running—when the heat gets turned up.
The wild card here will be the advice Putin gives Khamenei’s envoy in their meetings today, and the type of military support Russia may provide. Khamenei’s been generous with his Shahed attack drones, which have helped Putin turn the war in Ukraine to his favor; will Russia return the obligation of help to Iran in their time of need?
Meanwhile, Trump continues to shoot himself—and America and the free world—in the foot, as he just put conspiracy nut Kari Lake in charge of Voice of America and she just gutted our Farsi-language Iranian service, Radio Farda. As The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board wrote in a recent op-ed, on Lake’s watch:
Radio Farda has cut freelancers, furloughed staff, and allowed podcasts and social-media accounts to lapse. It has also cut back on broadcasts through Kuwaiti transmitters that supported short-wave radio broadcasts in Iran. This old technology remains a critical source of information in times of crisis or social upheaval, such as today.
The initial gutting of Voice of America, Radio Liberty, and the various U.S. foreign-language services was almost certainly a gift to Putin and Xi, as the Russian- and Chinese-language services were among the first to go. But Lake has taken her neofascist commission a large step further, gutting pro-democracy programming in dozens of languages worldwide.
Iran is also believed to have “sleeper cells” in the United States and other countries they could activate to commit acts of terror on the scale of 9/11. Unfortunately, Trump has replaced the intelligence professionals who ran our domestic anti-terrorism agency with a hard-core right-wing MAGA loyalist who’s only 22 years old, has no intelligence or military experience, and was most recently a lawn boy and grocery store assistant.
But that’s merely stupid, putting loyalty above competence, something we’ve come to expect from Trump and can see vividly in almost every one of his most important appointments; at least it’s not unconstitutional.
Both the Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Act—written in response to the excesses and lies that led to and made a bloody mess of Vietnam—require the president to consult Congress before commencing hostilities against any other nation. While Bush’s AUMF gave Trump a loophole, he didn’t even try to invoke it, meaning that he’s gone way beyond any actual legal authority he has, which is why AOC is calling for his impeachment.
To compound Trump’s apparent war crime, he informed several Republican members of Congress of the impending attack on Iran but failed to notify their Democratic colleagues, including those in the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” that U.S. law (50 U.S.C. § 3093) requires be notified about any “significant anticipated intelligence activity” including the use of military force.
By letting Republicans in but freezing out Democrats at the highest level (with the most secure top-secret clearances and proven discretion), Trump has politicized his attack on Iran, making it seem even more than before like what Bush was trying to accomplish back in the early 2000s when his approval numbers were underwater and 9/11 essentially rescued him.
By defying the law—the Constitution, the War Powers Act, and the AUMF—and simply bombing Iran without any consultation whatsoever, he’s also pulling a dictator stunt, essentially saying, “I, alone, will decide what I can and cannot do.” That’s an impeachable offense under the Constitution.
And it’s even possible that Trump is hoping for something similar to 9/11; his gutting of our intelligence agencies, including firing over 1,200 CIA employees, sure makes it look that way.
So, what do we do?
A bipartisan group of Senators and House members, during the last year of the Biden administration, introduced theNational Security Powers Act that would restore the Constitution’s requirement for congressional approval for acts of war.
Although the proverbial horse has already fled the barn, now it’s vital that we close the door before Trump takes Congress’ and the public’s acquiesce as permission for escalation, repeating the mistakes of Vietnam, et al. We must demand Congress pass it, along with requiring a legal justification from Trump for this act of war.
The number for the congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121. Tag, you’re it!
