The only good response to Trump's illegal Iran war
You don't beat a warmonger with process
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President Donald Trump ordered three military attacks on Iran tonight, officially — and illegally — entering the United States into a new war in the Persian Gulf without authorization by Congress.
Trump broke the news at 7:50 PM EST, at which point I began watching intently for a statement from Democratic leaders in Congress. It took until 9:40 for Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to release a statement, which never actually condemned the bombing. Instead, Jeffries simply said that he was praying for the troops and expected Donald Trump to explain his actions.
One gets the sense that perhaps Jeffries — who supported Israel’s diplomacy-busting bombing of Iran last week, toured Israel with AIPAC last year, and refused to step in when the conservative group pummeled his incumbent members with misleading ads — isn't actually upset about Trump illegally entering a war to support Benjamin Netanyahu’s maniacal bloodlust. I can’t say for sure, but it’s not exactly far-fetched, and the fact that we’re even considering it represents a political failure.
Republicans in Congress have almost uniformly applauded the attacks, and objectively speaking, the GOP deserves the blame for the retaliatory attacks that Iran conducts on US targets. The problem is that as much as Trump campaigned on being the “pro-peace candidate,” the public largely understands Republicans as trigger-happy hawks. It’s not enough to simply pass the buck; a real effective and strategic political opposition would actually oppose the war itself.
Manufacturing consent for the warmongers
Reactions from Democrats have fallen largely along ideological lines, from John Fetterman’s broken brain cheering on the military operation (imagine surviving a near-death experience and emerging from it so callous about mass murder of civilians) to condemnations from more progressive lawmakers. Unfortunately, the most common response has been focused on process instead of the moral hazard of killing countless people in a half-assed war on behalf of a madman who has spent the past 20 months waging a genocide elsewhere in the rgion.
What you’ll read over and over from center-left Democrats is a call for some kind of vote in Congress. It took Chuck Schumer four hours to respond to the announcement, and his entire statement amounted to calling for Republican Senate leader John Thune to introduce a vote on the War Powers Act. Even the relatively strong statement from DNC chair Ken Martin ended with a demand for a war vote: “Americans do not want a president who bypasses our Constitution and pulls us towards war without Congressional approval. Donald Trump needs to bring his case to Congress immediately.”
It may sound like they want to rein in Trump’s power, but if you think about it for more than half a second, it’s clear that because Republicans run both the Senate and Congress, calling for a vote isn’t so much a threat as it is a multi-step maneuver to pass the buck and legitimize the war. Republicans would never bring up a vote that could limit Trump’s power, and they’d no doubt wind up winning a vote that authorized some kind of military operation.
Many lawmakers have been priming the pump for weeks now. This afternoon, New York Rep. Dan Goldman tried to create a moral imperative for this war by calling Iran an enemy of the United States and democracy more broadly. It marked a significant shift from the original argument for bombing Iran, which was preventing the country from building a nuclear weapon.
The shift likely seemed necessary to war-happy lawmakers, because intelligence reports have confirmed that Iran isn’t particularly close to building a nuke. But the truth is the first casualty of war, and already, CNN has been broadcasting live from Israel, playing up the drama and raising the question of whether the US will also have to put boots on the ground in Iran.
In fact, the network — and one of its many “Democratic” contributors — got a head start on it before news of the bombings even broke today.
Rhetoric like this creates a false choice, implying that the sheer existence of evil justifies a bombing campaign by the United States. There is no doubt that the Iranian regime is a repressive and evil force that provides material help to terrorist groups. At the same time, but as we’ve learned in Iraq, Afghanistan, and so many other countries, the United States isn’t exactly seen as the great liberator these days.
This is bad politics! We have lots of proof!
America’s efforts to force regime change almost always lead to an unholy mess and decades-long quagmires, which is one reason why the prospect of war with Iran has been so spectacularly unpopular with voters.
Polls have shown overwhelming opposition to war with Iran. A YouGov poll released earlier this week found that 60% of Americans opposed attacking Tehran, while just 16% said that they’d like to see the US pull the trigger against Iran. Even a majority of Republican voters opposed what was at the time a prospective military engagement.
The Washington Post’s recent poll had 25% of respondents in support of a military operation against Iran and 40% absolutely against it, even though 70% of voters surveyed felt that Iran was at least a somewhat serious threat.
The disinterest in going to war with Iran isn’t a fleeting opinion, either: back in 2020, when Trump authorized a strike that killed Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani, polls found that a majority Americans felt that it had made the country less safe and that people disapproved of the president’s handling of hostilities with Iran.
It’s possible that Democrats were stung by the public reaction to the chaotic pullout from Afghanistan that helped doom Joe Biden’s presidency, but this moment has far more in common with the lead-up to the Iraq War, only with even more obvious politics.
Traumatized by 9/11 and drunk on jingoism, a majority of Americans initially backed the invasion of Iraq, and a majority of Democratic lawmakers decided to vote to give George W. Bush carte blanche to destroy the Middle East. It didn’t take long for the public mood to sour, making those Democrats look like cynical politicians and opening the door for a young and charismatic anti-war state senator to make his way to the White House four years later.
They should have learned their lessons: Today’s Senate Democratic leaders were all serving in the upper chamber back then, while the party’s current senior House members were also in charge of Congressional Democrats 20+ years ago, too.
Instead, it’s younger Democrats who are trying to chart a different and far more effective course. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got it right when she bluntly stated tonight that Trump’s decision to go to war was grounds for impeachment. No, that won’t happen, but trying to thread a needle and manufacture nuance when objecting to Trump is a fool’s errand.
It’s a simple statement that checks a lot of boxes: it places her diametrically opposed to an increasingly unpopular president, in agreement with an overwhelming majority of Americans, and on what will inevitably prove to be the moral high ground. It’s a statement by a leader, not a politician.
Trump is a strongman who only grows more emboldened when accommodated. Democrats have hedged their bets on issues that they think work in his favor, but the only way bombing Iran could possibly prove popular is if there’s an opposition that goes along with it. The moral and political imperative should be to avoid that at all costs.
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Cadet Bone Spurs didn't want to participate in a war, but he doesn't mind sending our children in one.
Just like Bush, this new war was started without the approval of Congress or the War Powers Act, and with bad intel: Bush was advised by Cheney, who modified what the Intel said.
This new fool refused to listen to his Intelligence, and since he doesn't have much himself... the result is a war that We The People were not consulted on.
Worse, while he was listening to Bibi, A FOREIGNER WHO HAD HIS OWN REASONS FOR STARTING THAT WAR, our Democrats on the Intelligence Committees were left in the dark and not even consulted!
The United States is living under a Fascist regime. He does whatever he wants. The Supreme Court is complicit. The Mid-East has been at war for centuries. We have no business getting involved. He distinctly said "no boots on the ground", but he lies. It remains to be seen.