Overnight, Donald Trump announced the start of massive and ongoing military operations against Iran. The framers of the United States Constitution gave Congress the sole power to declare war as the branch of government closest to the American people.That constitutional requirement has been degraded for decades. The Constitution says flatly, "The Congress shall have Power ... To declare War," but we haven't had a formal congressional declaration of war since World War II. What we've had are congressional authorizations of military force, or military actions authorized by the UN Security Council and funded by Congress.
Iran is a bad actor and must be aggressively confronted for its human rights violations, nuclear ambitions, support of terrorism and the threat it poses to our allies like Israel and Jordan in the region. However, absent exigent circumstances, the Trump administration must seek authorization for the preemptive use of military force that constitutes an act of war.
I think presidents should go to Congress before taking America to war, though the process doesn't accomplish much. David French writes:
... the constitutional structure, when followed, ... helps provide accountability. To make the case to Congress, a president doesn’t just outline the reasons for war; he also outlines the objectives of the conflict. This provides an opportunity to investigate the weaknesses of the case for the conflict, along with the possibility of success and the risks of failure.But that always leads to the same outcome: the president gets to do what he wants. It's valuable because at least there's a public discussion of what we all know the president is going to do anyway. It's also valuable because we retain the notion that we have multiple branches of government and we aren't a dictatorship.
In effect, our Republican Congress actually has authorized this and other Trump acts of military adventurism, just as it has authorized the rest of his dictatorial moves -- it has authorized them by using silence as assent. The unstated but obvious message this Congress has sent since January of last year has been: Unless we say otherwise, you can do whatever the hell you want, Mr. President. You're our Daddy. Daddy can do as he pleases.
Without announcing it, campaigning on it, or consulting with the rest of us, congressional Republicans have replaced our system of government with Christian-right male "headship." Republicans already believed that Democrats have no legitimate place in government, and they've since decided that Republicanism is embodied in one man, so he gets to decide more or less everything, as they believe the man should in the family. It's a system that works out nicely for Republicans because the base loves Trump and agrees that he should be allowed to do whatever he pleases, and most Republican candidates don't need anything but a strong turnout from the base to win elections.
The public, when asked by pollsters, says Congress should be involved in decisions to go to war, but Americans have such a vague understanding of how our government is supposed to work that there isn't across-the-board outrage at Trump's unilateralism. So I imagine all future Republican presidents will operate this way if they have Republican congressional majorities.
