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“A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Soviet author, dissident
Hello Downriver,
In case you missed it, we’re now at war with Iran.
Yep, while my wife and I stayed indoors watching “FUBAR” on Netflix — a coincidentally perfect description of the real situation — Trump announced he had bombed three alleged nuclear sites in that Middle Eastern sovereign country.
Read that again: “sovereign country.”
That’s what we are, what England is, what Saudi Arabia is, what Israel is, what Ukraine is… you get the idea.
And Donald Trump just took unprovoked — and unauthorized — military action against such a country.
Unprovoked, because there was no overt act taken by Iran that threatened the U.S.
Unauthorized, because only Congress can declare war — or, in the case of our invasion of Iraq in 2003, passed a resolution in October 2002 authorizing the use of military force against that country.
Prior to the Saturday attacks, Trump provided conflicting messages about his intentions toward Iran: at one point demanding negotiations, at another warning people in Tehran to evacuate.
From anyone else, such contradictory comments — mostly made via texts on his Truth Social site — might be viewed as clever deception and misdirection.
But from Trump, based on his history with the truth, it sounded more like indecision, accompanied by annoyance (a dangerous combination).
Remember, his own intelligence community had told him that Iran was NOT building a nuclear weapon — something National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress about earlier this year.
But Trump?
Once again backing his bus over his own people, Trump said on June 17 that, “I don’t care what she said, I think they were very close to having one.”
Subsequent saber rattling by Trump didn’t helped matters any, especially considering his ironic calls for negotiations; ironic when in his first term he walked away from a deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) signed by Iran, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, France, Germany and Russia.
In short, there once was a plan to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons; Trump trashed it.
And in Saturday’s attacks, he’s once again trashed our Constitution.
Article I, Section 8 specifically gives Congress the power “to declare War,” among other things.
So in nearly every military action in our history, Congress has been involved — either by declaring war or by passing resolutions authorizing the use of the military by the president.
Prior to the authorization allowing George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003, the most noteworthy act by Congress short of a war declaration was the infamous Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, which authorized LBJ to use military force in Southeast Asia.
And therein lies the Vietnam War.
But Trump didn’t come to Congress until after the air strikes — in direct violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Act).
That Act says that a president can send the U.S. military into action abroad ONLY by declaration of war by Congress, “statutory authorization,” or in case of “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”
Well, none of that happened prior to Saturday.
Instead, this was a pre-emptive strike against a sovereign nation (there’s that phrase again) that has not attacked us.
Attacked Israel? Yes.
But unlike Article 5 of the NATO agreement, we’re not required to come to Israel’s aid — and certainly not required to conduct pre-emptive strikes against their enemies.
Yes, we’re Israel’s strongest ally and have rightly supported that country with comprehensive military assistance over the past 77 years.
I would never dilute that relationship, but that doesn’t mean we take unilateral military action without the input of Congress; our laws require that.
Yet, as he has proven repeatedly, Trump doesn’t see our laws and the Constitution that way: he believes he has the singular power to trash our government, trample our rights, ignore laws and crush dissent with impunity.
So why wouldn’t he act just as irrationally when it comes to war?
So here we are: another Republican taking us to war based on faulty and/or incomplete intelligence and asking us to simply accept the outcome.
Which is what we’re all wondering now: what WILL be the outcome?
Will Iran come to the negotiating table or will it respond — not in a symmetrical way with air strikes on our forces in the Middle East, but with cyber-attacks on U.S. soil?
Or how about closing the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping channel through which around 20% of the world’s daily oil flows?
That’s what Iran’s parliament decided on Sunday. (My wife wondered aloud whether that was Trump’s plan: drive up the price of oil and make his friends even richer.)
This is the nature of war: unintended consequences are the norm, not the exception.
Or, as Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke was once quoted as saying “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
For what it’s worth, after the attacks, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the time for diplomacy had passed — and that his country had the right to defend itself, saying the U.S. had “crossed a very big red line.”
During a Sunday morning briefing by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, Caine said our country is on “high alert” for any retaliation from Tehran after the attacks.
“Our forces remain on high alert and are fully postured to respond to any Iranian retaliation or proxy attacks,” Caine said. “We will defend ourselves. The safety of our service members and civilians remains our highest priority.”
I hope so, but I’m not naïve enough to think that strong talk equates into automatic safety; we saw that in stark relief 24 years ago.
Notice I’m not quoting Trump at all in this column — for a good reason: all Trump does is talk (often contradicting himself) or rage tweet (or whatever it’s called).
Either you can’t believe a word he says — or you need to wait to hear what he says next.
Neither of which is the basis for good domestic or foreign policy.
Instead, it’s his actions that speak for him, not his bluster and bs.
All of this, of course, brought me back to those months following 9/11 when saber rattlers in the White House and in Congress were looking for someone — anyone — to attack.
It was in October 2002, that Congress gave Bush the authority to use military force against Iraq (after already invading Afghanistan) — which he did on March 20, 2003, called “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
And it was during the period between Congress’ resolution and the start of the invasion of Iraq, that a group of us gathered at our house to discuss the justification for invading that country and the long-term ramifications for ours.
For those who never heard or have forgotten, the primary justification for going to war in Iraq was a suspicion that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and had ties to terrorism, particularly al-Qaeda.
To help bolster his argument to the world, Bush tapped his highly-respected Secretary of State Colin Powell to deliver a presentation to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 3, 2002; Bush invaded Iraq 45 days later.
As we all know today, of course, the “evidence” Bush presented — through Powell — was false.
Hussein may at one time have had some weapons of mass destruction (WMD) — chemical, biological, nuclear — but it was found that he had ended those programs long before Sept. 11.
Taking all of this into account — although no one knew for sure Hussien had WMDs, no one considered him a direct threat to the U.S., and that it was a distraction from tracking down the 9/11 terrorists’ leader, Osama bin Laden — our group drafted a letter.
A letter, not an email, text or post to Facebook.
It was a typed and signed letter we sent to the entire Michigan congressional delegation — Republican and Democrat — declaring our opposition to war with Iraq, based on what we felt was faulty, incomplete information.
(We only received a response from newly-elected U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow.)
Of course, subsequent history proved our concerns warranted: no WMDs were ever found, and today the War in Iraq is widely considered one of our worst foreign policy and humanitarian disasters.
The conflict dragged on for almost nine years and claimed nearly 4,500 American lives. Over 185,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, and about 2 million were displaced from their homes during our occupation.
This is the memory that returns as we enter this war with Iran — and we ARE at war now — because it’s impossible to watch current developments and not have a déjà vu moment.
So, prepare yourself.
We don’t know what’s going to happen next — and the truly frightening thing is, neither does Donald Trump.
What we do know is that this is “Trump’s War” — and everything that happens next is on him.
Or, as Colin Powell famously repeated, there’s the Pottery Barn maxim: “You break it, you own it.”
——
To read Part III of my comprehensive essay on that moment in American history might be the “great” one Trump is looking for, check out Substack and look for me at “Farrandipity.” It’s free. Craig Farrand can be reached at craig.substack@gmail.com.
