Congress's War Powers Problem Just Got Worse

Ultimize. The United States Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. That's an exact quote, to declare war. That is in Article 1, Section 8. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 says its purpose is to ensure that the collective judgment of both Congress and the president applies when U.S. forces are introduced into hostilities. In other words, war is not supposed to be one man or one king freelancing with missiles while Congress plays the role of stunned interns, and yet that's exactly the spectacle we are watching right now. According to the New York Times, Republicans in Congress are now, quote, growing more anxious about the administration's handling of the war in Iran. Well, no kidding. With questions about its objectives, its cost, and whether ground troops will be needed. Now they're anxious. Okay, that's adorable. Now they're becoming concerned. After giving the president broad latitude to wage war with no meaningful congressional input, after resisting public accountability, after treating the Constitution like a suggestion box at Marriott, Now they're emerging from briefings looking confused. My favorite quote in the whole piece came from Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, previously thought to be a powerful position. He said, quote, we want to know more about what's going on. And then even better, we're just not getting enough answers. Really? You want to know more? What a moving moment. The arsonist would now like a briefing from the fire department, because this is the scam. These Republicans want the macho photo op of backing war, but they do not want the constitutional inconvenience of voting for war. They want the chest-thumping without the accountability. They want to act like Churchill on Fox News and then like helpless toddlers in a classified briefing. Gosh, we just don't know what the plan is. You don't know what the plan is because you deliberately surrendered your role in making the plan. This is not statesmanship. This is abdication wearing a flag pin. And let's be clear, the article says senior Pentagon officials failed to provide, quote, basic details about the scope and direction of the military campaign. It says lawmakers came out asking about the cost, the strategy, and even whether U.S. ground forces might be used. It says the Pentagon is preparing to deploy nearly 7,000 additional troops to the Middle East, including Marines and elements of the 82nd Airborne, while lawmakers brace for a possible $200 billion funding request. You do not get to act shocked by escalation when you helped create the political permission structure for this very escalation. And then comes the most sinister part, the language game. White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt defended the administration by saying congressional notifications and briefings had been provided out of courtesy and out of respect. Oh yes, how courteous and respectful this White House is. I know if you're like me, the first thing you think of when you think of this White House is, wow, are they courteous and respectful? And she said the White House does not view this as a war but as a major combat operations against Iran. And then there's the excursion word. Okay, well, if it's only major combat operations, that changes everything. That's like saying, Your Honor, I didn't rob the bank, I just engaged in unauthorized cash redistribution. We've reached the point where Washington thinks if it changes the label, it changes the constitutional reality. If bombs are falling, troops are deploying, billions are spent, and Congress never authorized it, I don't care if you call it a war or Operation Freedom Boner. The issue is the same: who decided and under what authority? Now, to be fair, and I do want to be fair, this is not a sin unique to Republican presidents. Democratic presidents have also stretched or ignored the constitutional balance. The Constitution, I noted, notes that President Truman ordered U.S. military intervention in Korea without a formal declaration of war, and modern practice has drifted even further from the original allocation of war powers. Congress has not formally declared war since World War II. Instead, it has often relied on authorizations or simply tolerated presidential initiative. Bill Clinton's Kosovo campaign, Barack Obama's Libya intervention, both fueled major arguments that presidents were bypassing Congress or sidestepping the War Powers Resolution. So no, I'm not pretending this began yesterday or that only one party has dirty hands here. Democratic presidents have sinned, Republican presidents have sinned. The imperial presidency is a bipartisan monstrosity. But, and this is a big but, this case is different in one especially grotesque way. In this case, even the president's own allies cannot explain the objective. The Times reports that Representative Nancy Mace said, quote, the justifications presented to the American public for the war in Iran were not the same military objectives we were briefed on today. She called the gap deeply troubling. Exactly, that's the story. Not just overreach, not just constitutional rot, total incoherence. In a functioning democracy, if a president is going to drag the country into war, there is at least supposed to be a stable rationale. You may agree with it or disagree with it, but there is supposed to be one. Here the rationale appears to mutate day by day, sometimes minute by minute. End the threat, send a message, restore deterrence, protect shipping, pressure Tehran, negotiate peace, demand surrender, demand unconditional surrender, keep the oil flowing, maybe no regime change, maybe yes regime change. This is not strategy, this is verbal jazzercise with cruise missiles. Reuters reported this week that Trump said the U.S. was negotiating progress with Iran, while Iran officials publicly said no, there were no negotiations, and one Iranian military spokesperson mocked Washington as, quote, negotiating with itself. At the same time, the White House has been threatening to hit Iran harder if it does not accept defeat. The Associated Press has also described Trump's messaging as mixed. Noting he's talked about winding down the war and easing some pressure even while sending more troops and ships into the region. This is not firmness. This is not genius. This is not four-dimensional chess. This is a man shouting three different things from three different sides of the same mouth. And this is where I want to hammer Congress, because Congress is not some innocent bystander here. Congress is the branch the framers expected to be jealous of its powers, not roll over and play dead. They're supposed to be jealous of their own powers, protective of its prerogatives, and terrified of one person dragging the republic into war on impulse. The War Powers Resolution literally says it was enacted to restore that collective judgment. Instead, what do we get? We get lawmakers acting like Yelp reviewers of a war they never voted to approve. Service was slow, objectives unclear, might not recommend. No, your job is not to leave a mildly negative comment after the appetizer. Your job is to decide whether the meal should be served at all. And yes, I'll go further. In a normal functioning democracy, This level of congressional dereliction would trigger serious impeachment talk, impeachment of the members of Congress as well, not necessarily because every member has committed a technical impeachable offense, but because a legislature that knowingly surrenders its core constitutional duty in matters of war is betraying the system it swore to defend. At minimum, there would be hearings, public votes, subpoenas, and a genuine political penalty for this kind of cowardice. Instead, too many of these Republicans behave like cult members who think their highest constitutional office is to bow down to the dear leader. This is the real sickness here, not conservatism, not patriotism, Not hawkishness, submission. Because once you decide the leader cannot be questioned, everything else collapses. Facts collapse, oversight collapses, language collapses, and eventually bodies collapse. So here is the sane centrist position. If military action is necessary, make the case publicly. State the objective clearly. State the cost honestly. State whether ground troops are possible and needed. Tell the truth about whether negotiations actually exist. Then go to Congress and get authorization. Force every member to vote yes or no. Make them own it. That is how a republic behaves when lives and trillions and history are on the line. What we have now is the opposite. A president or a king improvising, a White House euphemizing, and Republicans in Congress wandering out of classified briefings in essence, "Gee, uh, this war we enabled is surprisingly mysterious." No kidding. That's what happens when you treat the Constitution like optional reading and war like a branding exercise. You don't get strength, You don't get serious, you get government by fan club. Fan clubs are great for Taylor Swift, they are less impressive for launching a Middle Eastern war. This is dismaying, there's no doubt about it. Now, I spend most of my time helping people with personal development issues, things like self-development, self-esteem, and I just can't imagine how any Republican member of Congress can look in the mirror and say, wow, you're a big loser, you're a coward, you have no self-esteem. I don't know how they do that, just willingly giving away their power. I mean, I do understand the incentives. If they criticize dear leader, they get a nasty tweet, a nasty Truth Social, and before you know it, they're inundated with threats to their person and their children, and their political careers are over. But what is the point of having a political career, regardless of where you are on any policy? What's the point of even having a political career if you can't stand up for anything you believe in? If you just have to say whatever dear leader wants today, I'll be for that. And if they say something 100% opposite of what they said yesterday that I agreed to yesterday, I'll agree with that. I don't get what the point is. Ultimize.