For the past month, Americans have been wondering whether President Trump will attack Iran, or whether the massive military build-up in the Middle East is just another bluff. President Trump claims that the decision is his alone to make.
Thus far, President Trump has made little effort to explain to the American people – or to Congress – why launching a war against Iran is in our national interest. Instead, he wanders from one reason to another, hoping something will stick. First it was a “nuclear threat” even though he swore that he had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program last summer. Then, after the CIA, Mossad, and UK’s MI6 launched a regime-change operation in the form of violent protests in late December, the excuse for war became the Iranian government’s crackdown on the insurrection. But before that could be used as the excuse, the Iranian government was able to quash the uprising. So President Trump returned to the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, while adding in the presence of Iran’s ballistic missile program.
Even by the low threshold for recent US military actions overseas, these arguments are unconvincing. That is why Americans are so skeptical. In a major poll last month, seven in ten Americans said they oppose any US military action against Iran.
When it comes to matters of war, where billions of dollars and countless lives are at stake, “will he, or won’t he” is a terrible question to have to ask. More than 250 years ago we rose up against a system where the king claimed the power to take us to war on his royal decision alone. Our Founding Fathers well understood the folly of concentrating so much power in the hands of one person and placed the power to take the country to war in the hands of the people’s direct representatives, Congress.
This Constitutional obligation has not only been usurped by the Executive Branch. Much blame must be reserved for Congress, which has allowed itself to become a doormat for whoever occupies the White House when it comes to war powers. Members of the president’s own party – regardless of which party it is – are terrified of going against “their” president and members of the opposing party are silent because they don’t want to be accused of not “supporting the troops.”
The media is reporting that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will make yet another trip to Washington – his sixth in one year – where he is expected to again pressure President Trump to launch a war on Iran. Last time he was in the US – in December – the regime-change protests in Iran were launched. What does he have up his sleeve this time?
How can it be that a foreign leader has more say on whether we go to war than the US Congress?
Here’s what we do know. Whether Trump launches a war or not, the massive military build-up in the Middle East has already cost us billions of dollars. Those are billions that instead of helping to actually make America great again will only make the military-industrial complex “greater.” All the American people will see is the continuing destruction of the dollar and with it more inflation and a lower standard of living at home. And, of course, we will see a “war supplemental” spending bill on top of the trillion-dollar military budget for the year.
