Senate Democrats are demanding Republicans authorize Donald Trump's war on Iran, calling them "gelatinous blobs" for refusing to greenlight another Middle East quagmire without a proper vote—and ordinary Americans will pay the price in blood and treasure.
The bipartisan war machine is showing its hand. When it comes to sending your kids overseas, the establishment agrees on one thing: no debate, no questions, just sign the check. Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen accused their Republican colleagues of "surrendering" constitutional authority to the president. But the real surrender would be handing the executive a blank check for yet another war in the Middle East.
Warren and Van Hollen argued in interviews with the Guardian that the Republican-controlled Congress had abandoned its constitutional war powers. They urged Republicans to "stand with Democrats and assert Congress's authority as a separate branch of the federal government"—with power over declaring war.
Read between the lines. The Democrats aren't demanding Congress vote against the war. They're demanding Congress vote on it—which in practice means giving it the stamp of legitimacy. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, not the obligation to authorize every conflict a president starts.
Meanwhile, the Israel-US military operation in Iran has been repeatedly declared "illegal" by international observers, according to the Guardian. The international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu two years ago. The rules-based order Washington loves to invoke has been thoroughly degraded—laws ignored, norms tossed aside, multinational institutions sidelined.
The cost is measured in bodies. Palestine tops the list of countries with the most healthcare workers killed in the past five years. Lebanon ranks second, with 569 dead. Since fighting escalated in Lebanon this March, at least 135 Lebanese medics have been killed and nearly 400 others injured, according to the Guardian's Beirut-based reporter William Christou. Israel's targeting of healthcare workers has been "consistent" across two wars in Lebanon.
Trump has also claimed a deal was reached for Hamas to "completely disarm" and for Israel to withdraw from Gaza—though briefings from both sides revealed disputes over implementation that could prove difficult to overcome. The Guardian noted the announcement is being treated with caution by world leaders.
The question isn't whether Congress should debate war—it's whether either party will ever say no to one. The founders gave Congress the power to declare war precisely because they didn't trust executives with that authority alone. Now both parties want to rubber-stamp the next quagmire and call it constitutional oversight. The only thing "gelatinous" in Washington is the establishment's commitment to anything except more war.
