Our founding fathers clearly did not want presidents getting Americans into wars. They wrote Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution to make sure that only Congress could declare war. Yet presidents of both parties have gotten us into wars without Congress writing a declaration of war. Ever since President Truman sent troops into Korea in 1950, American presidents have bypassed the constitution.
Presidents of both parties have done it. They have often called the conflicts military operations rather than wars, but I don’t think many people consider the military operations in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran as anything short of a war. Thousands of people have been killed. Billions of dollars of taxpayer money has been spent, and nobody seems to have come up with a way any of these conflicts have benefitted the American people.
These military conflicts that aren’t labeled as wars have a bad habit of growing into massive operations.
In our current war in Iran, the Trump administration claims that the war was necessary due to an imminent threat from Iran. What the threat was changed over time. It first was Iran was close to making a nuclear weapon. Later, Trump explained that the imminent threat was that Iran was going to attack us so we had to attack them first. Does that mean it is OK to attack anyone the president feels may attack us at some point?
In past conflicts, presidents have tried to at least talk to the American people to generate support for something that will cause major sacrifices from many Americans. Presidents have also worked with our allies, particularly in NATO, to convince them that the operations are in the common good for the world community and to get some help in fighting the war. Not President Trump. This war is ours and ours alone.
The Trump administration likes to point out how successful our military attacks have been. By launching a sneak attack rather than convincing the public a war was justified, the military was able to kill a lot of Iran’s leaders.
However, now we are in a situation where our gas prices are skyrocketing, no other country wants to help us and our leaders can’t articulate what the goals are in this war or when it is likely to end.
I believe our founding fathers had the right idea. No one man or woman should be able to put America into a war. That is why they wanted Congress to be the ones who determine when it is necessary. Congress would have to debate the issue and the American public would be far more involved.
Now it is up to the American people to push Congress to write laws that stop this president and future presidents from unilaterally getting us into any more of these senseless wars.
Daniel Meekhof
Packwood
