Unhinged Trump Needs a Congressional Intervention

President Donald Trump has backed down from his bellicose threats:  “To bomb Iran back to the stone age;” “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” and that U.S. attacks would focus on energy facilities and bridges, unless the Iranians reopened the Strait of Hormuz. Because the U.S. military is required under the law of armed conflict to evaluate each target individually to see if the military advantage of killing the target is greater than the damage to civilians, Trump’s general threats of the blanket destruction of energy facilities and bridges and the implied use of nuclear weapons against Iran’s civilization are war crimes on their face.

This movie has played before; during his first term, Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” over keeping its nuclear program—a more subtle form of the threat to use nuclear weapons on a foe than the civilizational genocide bluster Trump has used against Iran. But the North Korean movie had an unexpected ending. Trump later became so enamored with negotiating with Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s tyrannical dictator, that he seemed to forget about the nuclear program, which still exists.

However, that relatively happy ending will probably not recur with Iran. Israel, a country with lots more clout in the U.S. political system than South Korea, will not let Trump rest until Iran, its primary regional foe, is adequately punished and defanged, which will likely never be.

Trump did the right thing by agreeing to a two-week cease-fire with Iran, but the damage had already been done. Many countries might now say how even an Iran with nuclear weapons could be any worse than Donald Trump making wild threats to use such U.S. weapons? Also, Iran and the United States are far apart on an acceptable post-war peace, and Iran seems to be holding the trump card in any negotiations. It has effective control of the Strait of Hormuz, which it didn’t have before Trump bumbled into, seemingly at Israeli prodding, attacking Iran in the first place. At one point, in a month-long, whiplash-inducing statements on his war of choice, Trump stumbled onto the right answer (before he went off the deep end with the threats to Iranian civilization). He seemed willing to declare victory, based merely on the tactical success of pummeling a plethora of Iranian targets from the air, while leaving the opening of the strait to other countries that use it to import their oil.

This might seem a skunky thing to do, starting a war that leaves an even worse outcome than before and then just walking away. It’s sort of like your neighbor dumping a truckload of manure in your driveway and yelling, “You deal with it!” The status quo is not good: a more strident Iranian regime than before, which is charging ships fees to use the strait. (But similarly, Panama charges people to use the Panama Canal.) However, given Trump’s overwhelmingly bad policy inclinations, things could possibly get worse if the war continues and probably would: perhaps a U.S. quagmire trying to reopen the strait or Trump actually using nuclear weapons on Iran.

There are even parallels to the Vietnam War: 1) Focusing on the speed of hitting tactical targets in Iran to conclude that we’re “winning” is similar to body counts so used in Vietnam and 2) Trump’s trying to bomb Iran to the negotiating table echoes the failed attempts by Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to use heavy bombing of North Vietnam to get a favorable and viable negotiated outcome during that conflict.

Thus, given Trump’s threat of inducing civilizational genocide, the American people need to wake up and demand a constitutional solution to this clearly demented president. Things are likely to get worse in the next three years as he ages. The danger of such a rogue executive is why the American founders, in the Constitution, assigned the power to initiate war to Congress, not the president. In a republic, they didn’t think such a grave and solemn decision should be left to one person; instead, it should be voted on by representatives of the people before it is undertaken.

Not only did Trump go to war without any approval from Congress, or even adequate notification or consultation, but now he is implicitly making crazed threats to end an adversary’s civilization. Urgently, Congress needs to step in and vote on legislation to restrain Trump from further attacks of any kind against Iran. Things are bad, but they can always get worse, especially with Trump’s erratic and deranged behavior.