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Lee Otis's avatar

I think President Trump has a stronger case that this post suggests on the appropriations question, and that it is not really "extremely unlikely that any recent Congress passed military appropriations with even a vague expectation that they would be used to hit Iran with the kind of force Trump employed." Rather to the contrary, I think Congress was likely fairly aware when it appropriated funds to build these bombs that the reason for building them was to have them available for this precise use.

Although the exact time that President Trump decided to proceed was obviously a very well kept secret, the Iran nuclear program and how to deal with it has been a topic of discussion for decades, especially in Defense circles. DoD started developing these huge bunker buster bombs around 2008, with the DoD appropriators' full knowledge. Now why might DoD do such a thing? What country had something hidden in bunkers that we might want to be able to bust, if push came to shove? And actually bust with conventional rather than nuclear weapons, so as not to unleash a debate about whether tactical nuclear weapons "count" as nuclear war?

The main reason to build these bombs was, and was well known to be, so that they would be available for the purpose to which President Trump put them if at some point it became necessary to do so in order to prevent a nuclear Iran. As defense expert Mark Cancian said to the Wall Street Journal a few days ago, "This is really what [this weapon] was designed for." https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/bunker-buster-bomb-iran-israel-conflict-fordow-1a65efca?mod=livecoverage_web Moreover, the DoD appropriators and even Congress as a whole when they funded DoD knew that this was these bombs' raison d'etre, and they went ahead and funded them.

That doesn't necessarily mean that they envisioned a President deciding unilaterally to use them, of course - but Congress was more than usually on notice by funding this weapon that it was funding it for an operation like the one President Trump authorized.

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Doug Israel's avatar

The difference is those other strikes were ordered by Democrats and this was ordered by Donald Trump. Otherwise they are the same. I want to make a broader historical point and it is this. We haven't declared war in 84 years and in my view it is very unlikely we ever will again. I think the method of officially declaring a state of war between two indpendent nation states is largely obsolete. It isn't how wars are fought any longer. The war declaration power was put int he Constitution at a time when the ways wars were fought is that armies were raised, put in the field and battles were fought. No war is ever fought in a polite way but there is a difference in the way modern military actions are fought.

This is not to say I don't think Congress should have a role. Of course it should. And in the major wars we have fought post WWII it has been with the exception of Korea which I think was very wrong. Truman (Who I admire greatly) should probably have sought a declaration of war on North Korea but I understand why he didn't, fear it would draw in the USSR and/or Red China (China of course came in anyway) He had UNSC authorization but should have gotten some kind of approval from Congress. In Vietnam Johnson did in fact get authorization from Congress. After Vietnam the next real war was the Gulf War and Bush despite having UNSC approval still sought and received Congressional approval. His son sought and got it for both Afghanistan and a separate approval for Iraq. Clinton ran a bombing campaign of Serbia without any authorization and so did Obama with Libya. Both should have sought Congressional approval. Many presidents going back to Jefferson have used the military without any Congressional authority for limited attacks or strikes.

With that history it should be clear that nothing in the Constitution forbids the president from using the military without approval of Congress. As long as he doesn't declare war unilaterally this is the case in my view. But I think the Constitution ought to be amended to require some notification of Congress and/or approval to some degree if any kind of campaign other than a one off strike (Which is what Trump did) is involved. It is important for our system that there be broad support for extended military action. But right now it doesn't exist and we of course cannot let the Democrats get away with such remarkable hypocrisy.

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