MANY THINGS CONSIDERED: Trump’s War

There is really no action an American president can take that is more serious, with more profound consequences, than ordering the military to strike.

When that action is taken without even a passing glance at the Constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize war it becomes the most anti-democratic and unconstitutional action imaginable, with the possible exception of inciting an insurrection.

The Republican Congress rolling over in acceptance of Donald Trump’s imperial ambitions in Venezuela, Greenland, Cuba and now Iran is a striking endorsement of what former Utah senator and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in 2023:

“A very large portion of my party,” Romney told his biographer Mackey Coppins, “really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”

This is the great test of the American Republic in it’s 250th year.

A strong majority of one political party, broadly speaking, no longer believes – and some would argue never has – in the revolutionary structure of this nation.

They simply don’t care about separation of powers or that the separation of church and state is fundamental to the American experience.

Individual rights embedded in the Constitution don’t exist for “others” with black or brown skin, who are immigrants or refugees, who love or see their own existence differently or who protest murders by law enforcement of those who express disapproval or resist.

Attacks on the very history of the nation, its colleges and universities and its world-class scientific institutions is no cause for concern for most on the political right because, let’s face it, they have given up on a constitutional government and its institutions.

That a president can ignore judicial rulings, gluttonously enrich himself in office, prosecute his political opponents, attempt to influence elections past and future, and wage an illegal war is of no concern to “a very larger portion” of the party.

Here is how historian and foreign policy commentator Robert Kagan put it in his 2024 book Rebellion: How Antiliberalism is Tearing America Apart – Again:

What we are witnessing … is not a political battle but a rebellion. The events of January 6, 2021, proved that Trump and his most die-hard supporters are prepared to defy constitutional and democratic norms, just as revolutionary movements have in the past. Though it may been shocking to see normal, decent Americans condoning a violent assault on the Capitol, that event demonstrated that Americans as a people are not as exceptional as their founding principles and institutions. Europeans who joined fascist movements in the 1920’s and ‘30’s were also from the middle classes. No doubt many of them were good parents and neighbors, too. People do things as part of a mass movement that they would not do as individuals, especially if they are convinced that others are out to destroy their way of life.

Sadly, many Democratic Party leaders see the present moment as just another right-left political fight akin to, say, a partisan battle over health care legislation. It is not that at all. We are witnessing not the same old politics, but a broad and ongoing rebellion against the American constitutional order.

Launching a war of choice against Iran, an action entirely outside the Constitutional framework, is just one more example that the rebellion on the right rolls on. ¹

On this gloomy Saturday I share the concern of many, including David Frum, that Trump’s War will further embolden him in new and even more authoritarian ways:

To paraphrase a saying from America’s previous big war: You don’t go to war with the president you want. You go to war with the aspiring autocrat you have. Some of Trump’s moves to second-term autocracy have been thwarted. Trump’s March 2025 executive order purporting to grab presidential control of state elections has been dismantled by the courts. His tariffs to create a revenue source under his personal control have been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Public outrage compelled him to jettison the most violent tactics used by his immigration-enforcement agents.

Now, however, Trump has a much more open field to try new autocratic methods. His majority in Congress remains complicit. The courts tend to go quiet in wartime. The only restraint will be public opinion. The trouble there is that those parts of the public who will be heard first and loudest are precisely those least interested—or actively opposed—to garnering the opportunity that opened this warning. A free Iran and a free United States: Americans should seek both. If we can get to a free Iran fast, Trump’s plot against American freedom will have less scope to operate. If the war to free Iran falters or slows, the attack on free institutions at home may expand and accelerate.

The ideal palliative would be for House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune to act, for a change, like the independent constitutional officers they are supposed to be. But they have to date failed to muster the character to do the jobs they swore to do, and not even the bad polls overhanging their party prospects have yet recalled them to duty. Only if the members behind them break ranks will the sunlight of democracy shine a little, as happened with Trump’s attempted cover-up of the Epstein scandal. So the call goes out: A dozen Republican House members—even two or three senators—who remember the principles they supposedly believe is all it will take in this moment of danger and opportunity to grasp the opportunities and mitigate the dangers. Congress needs to generate oversight committees dedicated to success in the war against the brutal rulers of Iran, and protection of democracy at home from the war makers.