While recognizing the inevitable costs of ongoing combat operations in Iran, I acknowledge that the president’s actions were consistent with his legal authority.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 provides the authority for a president to respond to emerging threats — for a limited period of time. Iran’s consistent and increasingly disruptive behavior presents exactly the kind of threat the War Powers Resolution envisions. Left unchecked, Iran would continue to pursue its nuclear weapons capabilities, destabilize the region, threaten our allies, and imperil Americans at home and abroad.
Iran has, in effect, been at war with the United States for decades, from the 1979 hostage crisis to the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut to its support for groups that have killed American service members in Iraq and elsewhere.
This is not a new conflict but a long-standing, well-organized and well-funded campaign against American lives and interests. Through a network of proxies operating across the Middle East and beyond, Iran has armed and directed attacks against Americans and our friends for years. This is an enduring pattern of deadly violence that warranted executive action.
At the same time, here in America, constitutional limits are in place to temper the president from unilateral authority. I support the president’s actions taken in defense of American lives and interests. However, I will not support ongoing military action beyond a 60-day window without congressional approval. I take this position for two reasons — one is historical, and one is constitutional.
We must be clear-eyed about history. The War Powers Resolution was born out of the hard lessons of Vietnam. In 1950, 35 advisers were sent to assist the French in training Vietnamese troops. Thirty-five men. By 1954, the French had withdrawn, and the American president had authorized 3,200 on-the-ground advisers. Fifteen years later, there was still no congressional declaration of war, but America had, at its peak, more than half a million American soldiers on the ground — at an eventual cost of almost 60,000 American lives. Over half those fatalities were young men and young women under 21 years of age.
The Constitution assigns the legislative branch the clear and explicit right to declare war.
To ensure that such a tragic cost was never again exacted from our nation’s best blood without a congressional declaration of war, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 effected a reasonable compromise. For obvious national security reasons, presidents must have the authority to respond swiftly to threats without the delay of congressional approval.
At the same time, a period of 60 days is a fully sufficient window for presidents to take emergency measures in response to a national threat and then remit a decision to the duly elected representatives of the people as to whether a state of war should in fact be declared and continued.
That history leads to my second point, which is that the Constitution assigns the legislative branch the clear and explicit right to declare war. To accord a president the power to wage an ongoing war without a congressional declaration of war is to render that congressional authority void.
I have too much respect for the Constitution to believe that a power which the Constitution provides is meant to be no more than the right to attach the word “war” to a military conflict. The mandate is bigger than that.
The Constitution assigns Congress the responsibility to “provide for the common defense,” and in that context, it gives Congress the corresponding power to declare war. It would be an act of disrespect to our Constitution if we were to accord the president the right to make war without any declaration of war; the Framers deliberately described a substantive power to declare war and assigned that power to Congress.
I understand the need to replenish U.S. stockpiles, strengthen the defense industrial base and maintain the capabilities needed to deter China; I would support a supplemental focus on those efforts. But I cannot support funding for continued military operations without Congress having the opportunity to weigh in.
Supporting decisive action in the moment and insisting on constitutional accountability in the long term are not contradictions but a tension mandated by our founding documents. On matters of such dire national consequences, the president and Congress are supposed to work in concert. Let us ensure that they do.