On Iran

[This post is written in response to a comment posted here.]


I am a Constitutional conservative,
and the Constitution gives us three contexts with which to work with other nations.  We can be at peace, or at war, or we can grant letters of marque and reprisal (I believe Ron Paul is the only Congressman who has submitted such letters in recent history.  Also, I am not a big fan of alliances and I believe that we are engaged in a few that we ought not be engaged in; but this is a different topic and also involves discussion of the 17th Amendment, etc.)

The Founders could not foresee a type of war (specifically nuclear war) in which opposing states could annihilate each other in less than an hour.  A reasonable response to a nuclear world that is still, in my opinion, significantly in line with the Constitution is the War Powers Resolution (arguably written to avoid a situation like Vietnam), which allows the President to act quickly in cases of “national emergency,” but which limits the time with which the President can employ troops without further Congressional authority.  (Note that I say “significantly” and not “completely”:  neither the Constitution, nor the the Founders, nor our own Western forms of diplomacy prior to 1973 acknowledged a formal concept embodied by our present “Authorization for the Use of Military Force.”  Such an “Authorization” is in my view an abdication of responsibility and sets a Constitutionally unworkable foundation upon which to conduct military actions.)

Under this rubric, I hold that the recent attacks on Libya were, under our form of government, un-Constitutional for two basic reasons:  1) We recognized the State of Libya as sovereign, if in no other way than by virtue of its de facto status in the United Nations; and 2) The President never made the argument, behind closed doors or otherwise (according to the Speaker of the House), that Libya’s posture represented a “national emergency.”  If he had  made the argument, and if our Congress had accepted the argument,  the next appropriate step would have been for the President to ask for a declaration of war against Libya, and the Congress could have voted on the issue.  That’s the Constitutional way of justifying that our military be used.  I do not believe Libya posed a “national emergency” threat to the United States; I therefore would have voted against a declaration of war, and were I in the Congress at the time the President ordered our military to attack Libya I would have vociferously objected and would have acted in line with our Constitution to oppose the President in every way possible.  I use Libya as an example because it is a good model of what not  to do, but Libya is only the latest example in a string of un-Constitutionally founded military engagements that we have been involved in since the Declaration of Victory at the close of World War II.

The situation in Iran is, however, very different from that of Libya, and history in my opinion instructs us how this is so.  I recently read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  It is fascinating to read how Hitler proceeded, step by step, to gain political power and establish a national socialist dictatorship.  I couldn’t help as I read to look for signs along the way that might have prompted action to stop him.  At which point should someone have intervened?  Did the world have to wait until he grew so powerful, the military so potent,  to understand his objectives?  I don’t think the world had to wait; I think the world, particularly Europe, still living with the tragedy of World War I, simply became passive and hoped that Hitler was not serious, and that he would keep his word, even as he broke it over and over again.  Hitler, in Mein Kampf, published in 1925 and 1926, had already told the world of his intentions; no one wanted to believe him.  How to have stopped him?  I have not formed a definitive answer from the reading of only one book and have some more study to do on the issue; a preliminary answer is that the world should have acted in a concerted fashion to stop him the very first time he clearly violated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, possibly when he first began to mass-produce armaments.

What I did gain from the reading is that we should have clear criteria to determine when we should intervene militarily, and that our intervention should be done strictly and clearly under our Constitutional form of government.  One of the criteria (and I finally arrive at one of your stated concerns, Iran) is that we must listen carefully to the political leadership and the political philosophy of potential adversaries.  When their radical ideas become officially embedded in their policies, we must take them seriously.  Iran is such a case.  One of their stated goals is the eradication of Israel.  We must therefore assume, based on a hard look at historical example, that they will catastrophically strike Israel, and other nations (including the United States) if they conclude that they are able to do so.

I do not have access to the latest intelligence, but regardless, our national position should be this:  That an Iranian military attack on the state of Israel or other U.S. allies in the region will prompt a U.S. declaration of war; and that the objective of war would be the unconditional surrender of Iran.  (This does not mean that we have to work unilaterally; but it also does not mean that we would only act if we could form a coalition.)  Because I am conservative, I do not believe we should strike Iran, or declare war, until Iran clearly moves to attack us or our allies; I would only advocate a “pre-emptive” strike (the President acting under the War Powers Resolution) if this could be clearly proved (to my standard if I were a U.S. Representative) to be the case; and a “pre-emptive” strike would be only the first strike of the aforementioned declared war.  Otherwise, our uniformed military should not be involved.

I welcome any questions or discussion on these topics, but readers of this blog should note that I firmly believe that the President (not just Obama, but the Office in general) has exceeded its Constitutional bounds, that the Commander-in-Chief rightfully commands primarily and almost exclusively under a declaration of war (or under the War Powers Resolution in cases of clear national emergency such as a nuclear strike), and that the peoples’ house, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the states’ house (or so it ought to be), the United States Senate, retain the Constitutional authority to engage our military, and our country, in war, and that through declaration.