President Trump dragged an unprovoked America to war even as he pushed Iran to resume negotiations. He attacked Iran two days after he said he would decide “within the next two weeks.”
An artful deception.
As our nation itself was once the victim of a surprise attack under cover of peace talks (remember Pearl Harbor?) that ploy does not belong in our arsenal. Whether it was as successful as Trump claims is less certain.
Although Iran’s processing facilities were hit hard — those we knew about, anyway — U.S. authorities admitted they don’t know about some 880 pounds of enriched uranium that reportedly was moved to another location. So, if Iran is determined to build a bomb, it might not have to start over.
Nor is it clear that either Israel or Iran will keep the truce that Trump quickly announced.
If they both do, that would be a positive step.
A brazen violation
But the consequences for the U.S. are not all good.
Trump committed a gross violation of the Constitution, the most brazen violation yet of his oath to uphold it.
He could be impeached for that, but it’s impossible, because his party narrowly controls Congress, where most Republicans either adore him or fear him too much to hold him accountable.
It’s imperative for House Democrats at least to file impeachment articles, if only to draw a bright line against any more Trump wars. Otherwise, they are destined to be remembered as useless and timid wimps as the U.S. was slouching toward a dictatorship.
The Constitution reserves to Congress the authority to make war. Yes, presidents in both parties have skirted the War Powers Act before, but the usual pretexts don’t apply here.
An unprovoked attack
Congress has authorized the president to act on his own only in response to a foreign attack or to combat terrorists. Iran did not attack us, and it is a sovereign nation, rather than a stateless entity like Al-Qaeda.
Moreover, U.S. intelligence wasn’t convinced that Iran was committed to making a nuclear weapon. There was no immediate urgency for the U.S. to go to war.
These questions are unpleasant to contemplate, but they must be asked: Did Trump act out of envy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military prowess? Did he do it to suppress his opposition?
Going to war is, after all, an established authoritarian technique for quelling dissent.
Netanyahu’s patsy
Netanyahu played Trump like a fiddle. He contrived all along to have U.S. bunker-busting bombs do what Israel couldn’t, and for Trump to play into his hands ceded a vital part of our national sovereignty to a foreign nation.
Whether the U.S. bombing was necessary or prudent is beside the point, for Trump should have asked Congress for authority as President Johnson did before escalating the U.S. role in Vietnam and as the presidents Bush did before the Gulf War and in Iraq.
Now the isolationist Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and other Trump allies in Congress and the media know how fickle and false their “America First” president is.
And Netanyahu has every reason to expect Trump to be his patsy again if his extremist coalition in the Knesset tries to expel 2 million Arabs from Gaza and annex the West Bank, as they unashamedly hope to do.
Trump may look in the mirror and see a king. What he should see is someone who bears a heavy measure of blame for whatever progress Iran had made toward building a bomb, and for giving Netanyahu an implied license to start a war.
Iran likely would not have been able to breach its nonproliferation obligations — as reported by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency — had Trump not trashed the pact that President Obama and other world powers, including Russia, made with Iran to limit its nuclear program. The pact included verifiable foreign inspections.
In 2016, Trump pledged to renegotiate the treaty, but broke that promise by simply repudiating it.
The Mideast is less stable now. Because Trump attacked Iran while still urging it to resume negotiations, neither friend nor foe can afford to trust him. That goes for his friends in MAGA world, too.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.