Congress just set a really dangerous precedent

WASHINGTON – By sidestepping a vote on authorizing war against Iran this week, Congress ceded its constitutional responsibilities once again, some lawmakers warned, empowering current and future presidents to unilaterally launch major wars in a major break with the nation’s founding principles.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said allowing President Donald Trump to wage an indefinite war in the Middle East without their explicit approval could set a dangerous precedent, ensuring that important decisions about war and peace are no longer made democratically after open debate, but rather behind closed doors and by a single person.

“There was a time, not long ago, when we voted to go to the Iraq war. We voted to go to the Afghanistan war,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told News themezone, calling the lack of a vote on Iran “a bad precedent.”

“This is a Congress without ambition,” he lamented. “This is a Congress with no belief structure to defend legislative prerogatives. They are simply a rubber stamp for whatever the president tells them to do.”

The Trump administration and its allies on Capitol Hill have made the tense argument that the United States’ massive bombing of Iran was necessary to respond to an imminent threat, although they have not yet presented evidence of an imminent attack by Tehran against the United States. They have also given a number of shifting explanations to further justify the war, ranging from regime change to eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, its navy and its ability to launch ballistic missiles.

On Friday, Trump added another goal to the list: the unconditional surrender of the Iranian government, apparently rejecting any diplomatic solution to the military conflict that has so far left six US service members and more than 1,000 Iranians dead.

AP Photo/Mohsen Ganji

But while much about the war remains unclear, one thing is becoming clear: Trump’s second presidency will further shift war-making powers away from Congress, giving his successors the opportunity to deploy the military however they want.

“There’s no doubt about it, someday there will be a Democratic president, and he or she will do something that will make Congress work, how dare you claim? [warmaking] force? And we’ll say, Well, you know, you’re putting the predicate right here. [with Iran]”Senator Thom Tillis (RN.C.) acknowledged in an interview with News themezone.

Still, nearly all Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week, including Tillis, nay a war powers resolution that would have restricted Trump from using more military force in Iran, at least until he requested and Congress approved authorization to do so, as it did for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some Republican senators argued that Trump had the authority to act unilaterally and that stopping hostilities in the middle of combat would be impossible at this time.

“The train left the station,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) told reporters. “I think one of the most devastating things we could do is stop the train. It would be unfair to our troops, unfair to those who lost their lives. So right now it’s not really an option.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said Congress should not vote at all on going to war right now because of how it could affect the morale of American service members.

“I think the main limitation of any president of the United States is public opinion. What you don’t want to do in a terribly divided Congress is hold a vote that shows us divided,” Johnson said in an interview with NPR. “That would not be good in a war effort. It would not be good for our troops. It would not be good for the success of operations.”

Even Republicans who previously asserted Congress’s power to declare war, such as Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), said it was too late to challenge the president.

“We are at war,” Young, a former US Marine, explained to reporters. “It would be dangerous for the American people and our national security to withdraw all participation in military action right now.”

Trump is far from the only president to bypass Congress when it comes to military actions: Modern presidents have hardly ever They sought congressional approval before undertaking military action abroad, including Ronald Reagan, who sent troops to Lebanon in 1982, and Bill Clinton, who deployed U.S. troops to Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo as part of United Nations peacekeeping efforts.

In 2011, Barack Obama ordered military strikes against Libya under a UN Security Council resolution. Republican lawmakers, many of them still in Congress, were furious that he did so without congressional approval. they too refused a resolution to authorize them in the House.

But Trump’s war in Iran – like George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – has been carried out on a much larger scale than the more limited military deployments ordered by his predecessors. More than 50,000 US troops are involved in the operation, which has escalated as Iran continues to retaliate with missile strikes against US allies in the region. More importantly, the Trump administration has not ruled out the possibility of committing US ground troops.

Senators, including some who otherwise supported Trump’s commitments, were also concerned about how little effort was made to inform the American public about the unpopular war. Fifty-nine percent of Americans disapprove of attacks on Iran, 60 percent say they don’t believe Trump has a clear plan to handle the situation and 62 percent say he should get congressional approval for any additional military action, according to a report. cnn survey.

“We should have held hearings, asked probing questions and made arguments to achieve a greater measure of unity around this operation from the beginning,” Young said.

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) said briefing Congress in a classified environment about the details of the Iran war, as the Trump administration did earlier this week, actually makes it harder for lawmakers to do their jobs and inform the public about what’s happening; yet another way this administration has made the legislative branch basically irrelevant.

“There is a place for classified briefings, but when they only do classified briefings with us, it’s essentially giving 535 members a gag order. They can go out and talk about whatever they want, but I can’t say a word about what they said,” Rosen said.

“How are we supposed to look our constituents in the eyes and send our sons and daughters to war if we are not willing to take this solemn responsibility seriously?” asked Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).