Introduction
So it appears that events in the Middle East have, once again, overtooken us. The United States and Israel have launched a joint operation to topple the Iranian regime, and to date have successfully killed the Ayatollah and a number of other regime leaders. From a military standpoint, the early returns all point to a successful operation.
For reasons stated in that Tweet off to the right there, the time I have to address this is somewhat limited. Within those limits, what are we to make of it?
War Powers
The framing for this next point is the “way we do things now.”
I don’t have any doubt that the actions that have been taken are fully legal and in accord with the War Powers Act and all that. In other words, it is copacetic and in line with the way we do things these days. But I don’t like the way we do things these days, and would much prefer the older constitutional order. In the olden days, Congress declared the war, and the president prosecuted the war. There are of course military actions that would be brief enough and/or limited enough that they would not require this—dealing with a flotilla of pirates, say. But when the effect of your action accomplishes a regime change in a sovereign country, then that appears to me to be what that portion of the Constitution is actually for.
On the one hand, and then on the other . . .
But if this action by Trump is out of line, then Obama authorizing our action against Gaddafi in Libya was out of line in exactly the same way. Or if you want to complain in the other direction, the actions of Bush the First against Saddam Hussein would also be out of line. And this kind of reasoning is one of the things that has turned our overseas military actions into a political football in our domestic politics. A constitutional action by the president should not be defined as one which a president from your political party took. An unconstitutional action is not to be defined as one which the opposing party took.
One of the great disadvantages of our current way of doing things is that it permits this kind of hypocritical posturing. Democrats calling this “unconstitutional” simply means that they don’t like Trump, and want to say anything negative that they can. The fact that Congress does not declare war anymore opens the door wide open for this kind of nonsense.
So I do yearn for a time when we can get back to a constitutional order instead of our makeshift contemporary legal order. Legal is fine, but in my view constitutional originalism would be far better.
Nation Building
A bit on the politics of all this. Trump is not actually alienating his MAGA base with this kind of thing. What would alienate his base—sick as they are of “forever wars”—would be any kind of attempt at nation-building. I mean the kind of thing we thought we could do in Iraq or in Afghanistan. The thing we thought we could do over there turns out to have been the kind of thing we cannot do. Events have shown that we shouldn’t have thought that.
It turns out that we can fire things from our airplanes that can kill an Ayatollah. We have no capacity to use our air power to bring in Iranian versions of Madison, Jefferson or Washington.
I think that we will be able to tell if Trump is avoiding the hubris of nation-building if a bunch of establishment figures start complaining that he is blocking the entry of NGOs, those who want to get in on the flow of money that always accompanies all forms of nation-building. If Trump says something like “the Ayatollah is now gone. All Iranian political prisoners have now been freed. We are placing the Shah as a provisional stabilizing leader whose sole task will be to oversee parliamentary elections within six months. The only group not allowed on the ballot will be the Revolutionary Guard. You guys sort all the rest of it out.”
The point I am making here is not whether this will work out well in Iran. It might or it might not. But whatever happens there is likely to be an improvement as far as we are concerned. So my point here has to do with Trump not alienating his MAGA base. If he does all this, and then comes home, I don’t think any of his natural support will erode.
Doomposting?
A number of people are doomposting about the pending arrival of World War III. I really don’t think that is what is happening at all. There are the legal issues, mentioned above, and the constitutional issues, also mentioned above. There would also the issue of domestic politics and Trump’s support. But on this point, I think we should focus more on the amateur sociological issues. Taken in that light, this is simply a big dog/little dog dynamic.
Consequently, I believe the most likely outcome will be an expansion and reaffirmation of the Abraham Accords. A lot of the Arab nations were hostile to what Iran was up to. So quite apart from how we got there, I think the Middle East is going to be a lot quieter now. But that, as news reporters like to say, “remains to be seen.”
But my take here is that I don’t appreciate some of the means that got us here, but I also think that the outcome is going to be a bit more pleasant than it has been.
Conclusion
We are just a few days into it, and a lot more can happen. When it does, and as it does, we should make adjustments in our thinking. One of the things that will remain constant is that those who are running a 104 temp with the Jew Floo will continue to maintain that the United States is simply doing Israel’s bidding, and that Netanyahu has Trump in his back pocket. But this is actually an area where Israel’s interests and ours align. That being the case, there should be no problem with working together. It turns out that the people over there who really hate Israel also hate us. Two things can be true simultaneously.
There will be more as things unfold.