Washington — The US Congress is about to start Discuss the powers of war On the authority of President Donald Trump Bombing Iran Under highly unusual circumstances – he actually did, and the country basically Already at war.
Bombs are falling, people are dying, and pledges of vengeance and vengeance fly in escalating threats, all while untold amounts of taxpayer money are being spent on a military strategy expected to last for weeks with an indeterminate goal and conclusion. Unlike before Iraq War 2003which involved long debates in Congress following the September 11, 2001, or more recent attacks. US military strikes on Venezuela Which proved to be limited, common The US-Israeli military attack on IranCalled Operation Epic Fury, Operation Epic Fury is well underway, with no foreseeable end in sight.
at least Four American military personnel They were killed, and Trump warned on Sunday that “there will likely be more.”
The moment is A specific one Congress, which alone has the power to declare war under the US Constitution Republican Presidentwho seized power continuously during his second term with a clear and limitless vision of his executive ability.
“The Constitution is intended to prevent the accumulation of power in any branch of government — and in any single person in government,” said David Janowski, acting director of the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog organization.
“Congress is the representative of the people in a way that the president is not, although we tend to focus on the president,” he said. “We need representatives of the people to comment on whether we, the people, are going to war now.”
In the United States, Congress would need to affirmatively approve wartime operations, with a declaration of war, or with an authorization for the use of military force, to essentially approve the actions. But this rarely happens.
In fact, Congress has declared war only five times in the country’s history, most recently in 1941, entering World War II one day after Pearl Harbor. Congress approved AUMF for the Gulf War in 1990, and did so again in 2001 and 2002 to wage the September 11 wars in Afghanistan and then Iraq.
But Congress was also created War Powers Resolution During the Vietnam War era, as a tool of last resort – it was deployed in Slap the president Who embarked on military expeditions without congressional approval.
Both the House and Senate have prepared war powers resolutions for votes this week.
Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that Trump, as president, “does not have the right to do this alone.”
“When the president engages American forces in a war of choice, he must go before Congress and the American people and ask for a declaration of war,” Warner said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
While lawmakers criticized the Iranian regime and its nuclear ambitions, Democrats said Trump did not provide a rationale for the war or outline his strategy for waging a nuclear war. What comes nextTrump’s coalition on MAGA is divided over what it sees as the president’s failure to fulfill his “America First” campaign promise by leading the United States toward foreign war. Many lawmakers are concerned that the entanglement will continue much longer as the process is killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei And hundreds of people in the area.
White House officials are scheduled to brief congressional leaders and lawmakers this week, but the question-and-answer sessions will be behind closed doors, without an audience watching.
Over time, presidents of both major political parties have gained broad authority to engage in what are often limited U.S. military strikes to achieve strategic national security objectives without congressional approval. The military operations carried out by Democrat Barack Obama in Libya, and the incursions carried out by Republican George H.W. Bush in Panama, took place without the approval of Congress.
But restricting the president’s war powers is something lawmakers past and present have rarely been able to accomplish. Even if Congress can pass a war powers resolution to rein in Trump in Iran, the House and Senate are unlikely to obtain the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto.
Trump has ignored Congress’s power to dictate what he can and cannot do, on war and other matters. He mentioned Iran only briefly in his State of the Union address last week, treating lawmakers’ support as an afterthought.
The Founding Fathers created a constitutional system in which the president and Congress compete over these issues — but with Congress having one particularly powerful tool, because it controls federal funding, said John Yu, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Congress knows how to stop this if it wants to,” said Yu, who helped draft the Bush administration’s 2001 and 2002 authorizations for use of force. He said the Vietnam War ended as soon as Congress withdrew funding.
But Congress is controlled by a Republican majority that largely shares Trump’s view of concentrating military power against Iran, and recently approved massive new money for the Pentagon, about $175 billion, in the big tax cuts bill he signed into law last year.
With the president’s Republican party in power in the House and Senate, it is not surprising that they are unlikely to object, as Yu said: “They agree with him.”
Before the discussions, Republican Senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that Trump had already presented his vision for Iran.
Cotton said on Sunday that Trump had made clear that the United States would not send ground forces into Iran. Instead, the Americans should expect to see an “expanded air and naval campaign” in the region, which could lead to the pilots being shot down, although he said military personnel would be recovered.
A campaign is expected to last weeks as Iran appoints a new leader and determines how it will respond to the US attack.
“There’s no simple answer to what comes next,” Cotton said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”