MIKE DAVIS: Why Trump's Iran strike was necessary and lawful
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s [dead] supreme leader, has met his well-deserved demise after a barrage of airstrikes announced by President Trump Saturday morning. A slate of Khamenei’s fellow Islamic terrorists in the Iranian government have met the same fate.
Khamenei never tried to hide his thirst for American blood. Two weeks ago, he posted on X threatening to sink American ships. He plotted to assassinate President Trump prior to the November 2024 election, deploying a hit squad to U.S. soil armed with surface-to-air missiles. This forced Trump’s Secret Service team to use a decoy plane.
These are just the most recent incidents in the Islamic terrorist war Iran has waged against the U.S. for 47 years. In 1979, Iran took American hostages at our embassy in Tehran, torturing them in appalling captivity for 444 days. In 1983, Iran bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. In 1996, Iran bombed and murdered Americans in the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and in 2000 Iran attacked the U.S.S. Cole. During the Iraq war, Iran armed terrorist insurgents — who then used their weapons to slaughter and maim hundreds of American troops.
Iran declared — and has relentless waged — war on America for 47 years. Yet President Trump’s pathological critics are now insisting his highly surgical and successive operation to take out Khamenei and his fellow Islamic terrorists was unlawful, because Article I of the U.S. Constitution extends Congress, not the chief executive, the power to declare war. As usual, the peanut gallery is as incorrect as it is feckless.
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The U.S. Constitution indeed grants Congress the power to "declare" war, and the Founders were deliberate with their word choice: James Madison and Founding Father Elbridge Gerry chose it as a replacement for the power to "make" war. Their rationale? To leave "to the Executive the power to repel sudden attacks." Or, as Alexander Hamilton explained to Congress in 1801, "when a foreign nation declares, or openly and avowedly makes war upon the United States, they are then by the very fact, already at war, and any declaration on the part of Congress is nugatory." There is no such thing as a one-sided war.
In turn, the president possesses the authority — the constitutional duty — as the commander-in-chief to repel invasions and defend Americans from attacks. This argument hasn’t remained mere legal theory. Shortly after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, Hitler declared war against the United States. Although the Germans had beaten us to the punch, FDR didn’t need to wait for a formal declaration of war from Congress to strike back. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson deployed the Navy against the Barbary pirates — the predecessors to today’s Iranian Islamist terrorists — without waiting for a congressional go-ahead.
In 1973, Congress attempted to curb presidential military authority through the War Powers Resolution. Passed over President Nixon’s veto, the resolution requires presidents to withdraw troops from combat if, after 60 days, Congress has not ratified their deployment (a mechanism referred to as a ‘legislative veto’).
Every president since Nixon, whether Democrat or Republican, has dismissed the War Powers Resolution as unconstitutional. In 1999, President Clinton undertook military action to stop the mass murders of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. In 2011, President Obama deployed the military to take out Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi. In both cases, members of Congress sued, claiming violations of the War Powers Resolution. In both cases, they lost. Now, having learned nothing, members of Congress are threatening to do the same thing to President Trump.
If the legislature wants to stop military action, it has lawful avenues to do so. It could pass a resolution as it would any other act of Congress. It could refuse to fund the military. The very concept of the legislative veto was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1983, and for good reason — our Constitution has outlined a procedure for legislative change. Congressmen do not get to bypass our system of check and balances for the sake of convenience.
Last year, our commander-in-chief sent Iran a crystal-clear warning when Trump crippled Iran’s nuclear weapons program in Operation Midnight Hammer. The regime didn’t get the message. President Obama dealt with an obstinate Iran by sending Khamenei pallets of cash. President Trump has dealt with a stubborn and deadly Iran by sending Khamenei planeloads of bombs.
President Trump does not need permission from Congress to prevent the next Pearl Harbor. As it turns out, it’s hard for Iran’s supreme leader to sink American ships when his house is reduced to rubble and he is turned into a charred skeleton. Good riddance, Ayatollah. And sorry for your loss, to his defenders in Congress.