Democrats think Trump is a worse enemy than Iran

By Chris Powell

Members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation are probably right that President Trump should have sought the approval of Congress before launching last weekend’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear bomb-making infrastructure. That is the clear implication of the Constitution’s placing with Congress the power to declare war, and it is the command of the federal War Powers Act. 

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But then most of Connecticut’s members of Congress, all Democrats, were in office and offered little objection when Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both Democrats, went around the world bombing stuff. Without formal congressional approval, Clinton ordered attacks on Kosovo, Sudan, and Afghanistan, and Obama ordered attacks on Libya and Syria.

But Trump is a Republican.

Of course in principle democracy requires the public’s ratification of decisions to go to war, and the United States now is openly at war with Iran. Vice President J.D. Vance’s contention that the United States is not at war with Iran but with its nuclear bomb-making program is a distinction without a difference, just an articulation of war aims. More to the point, as a practical matter Iran has been at war with the United States for many years, insofar as Iran, as Trump noted last weekend, is the world’s main sponsor of terrorism and this terrorism has killed many U.S. citizens.

Also as a practical matter, Congress retains control over the war with its power of the purse. It can pass legislation forbidding spending for war against Iran. 

But the legal questions are separate from the question of what the U.S. position toward Iran should be. So far the Connecticut delegation has failed on that question.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy says Iran poses no immediate threat to the United States. That is contradicted by the many years of Iran’s sponsoring terrorism against Americans and others. Additionally, if the United States has an interest in a stable and peaceful Middle East, where so much of the world’s oil is produced and where the United States has formal or informal allies, Iran’s long campaign of subversion there is very much a threat to this country.

Criticizing Trump’s attack on Iran, U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney quotes Gen. David Petraeus’ query about the second war with Iran’s neighbor, Iraq: “Tell me how this ends.”

This is not really profound. For the second war with Iraq was an invasion, a land war of conquest with thousands of soldiers pursuing imagined “weapons of mass destruction” as well as “regime change.” No one, at least not yet, is advocating the conquest of Iran, whose regime is built on oil installations that can be easily destroyed from a distance with bombs and missiles without conquest.

Yes, there’s no telling how far Iran will go with retaliation. But there long has been good reason to fear that the end sought by an unmolested Iran would be mass murder, especially in Israel, whose destruction the ayatollahs long have pledged and have been very tempted by, Israel being so small geographically, a “one-bomb country.”

Trump says the war with Iran ends with Iran’s capacity to make nuclear weapons, but that is wishful thinking. Even without nuclear weapons Iran’s theocratic fascist regime may remain in power, continuing its terrorism and subversion, chanting “Death to America” along with “Death to Israel,” and pursuing an objective that is broader still — the forced religious conversion of the entire world. If the ayatollahs stay in power, they are sure to continue their war even without nuclear weapons.

The United States is a continental country, not a one-bomb country. But even one nuclear bomb — detonated in Washington or New York or another city — could inflict catastrophic damage that might last a century. Democratic leaders, most still supporting open borders, through which such a bomb might pass, should reflect on this danger, as the Israelis long have been reflecting on it while being attacked by Iran’s proxies. 

At last the Israelis have drawn the proper conclusion. But the only conclusion Connecticut’s Democrats seem able to draw is that if Trump did it, it must be wrong.   

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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

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