Editorial: Trump’s war of choice in Iran isn’t putting ‘America First’

After years of posturing as a “peace president” against regime change wars, Donald Trump has dragged the United States into yet another war abroad. While fulfilling a longtime neoconservative dream, this war is the latest assault on the constitutional order.

Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution is clear. Congress is vested with the power to raise and support armies, maintain a navy and, most importantly, “to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water.”

Yet without any relevant authorization from Congress, President Trump chose to enter the United States into an ill-defined war of choice with the general aim of toppling the Iranian regime.

To be clear, the government of Iran has long been an enemy of freedom. The authoritarian regime has brutally oppressed the people of Iran for generations. However, that does not grant the president of the United States license to bypass the Constitution to wage war on it.

There certainly wasn’t an imminent threat to the United States. “Trump administration officials acknowledged in closed-door briefings with congressional staff on Sunday that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack U.S. forces first,” Reuters reported.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson have since indicated that the administration decided to wage war on Iran because Israel was planning to.

“Because Israel was determined to act with or without the US, our commander in chief and the administration and the officials [in the Cabinet] had a very difficult decision to make. They had to evaluate the threats to the US, to our troops, to our installations, to our assets in the region and beyond,” said Johnson.

Needless to say, America shouldn’t bypass its own constitutional system of government because Israel wanted to go to war with Iran.

The president, for his part, decided to take credit for taking the nation to war. “Based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first,” he told reporters. “And I didn’t want that to happen. So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand. But Israel was ready, and we were ready.”

Setting aside any potential merits to war with Iran, part of the preparation should’ve included seeking explicit authorization from Congress. That would’ve allowed the American people, through their representatives, to decide whether it made sense to sacrifice American lives and American tax dollars on yet another regime change war.

Instead, the president chose to initiate a conflict that has already claimed the lives of Americans and civilians, including hundreds of deaths at an Iranian girls’ school.

These are not the outcomes Americans expected when electing the “anti-war” president. Sending American soldiers to die abroad in wars of choice won’t make life more affordable for Americans and certainly won’t make Americans any safer. But what it will do is set yet another dangerous precedent that future presidents will undoubtedly abuse.

This is not the system the Founders designed or intended.