I might as well say it clearly: I\u2019m for regime change in Iran.<\/p>\n
The Islamic fanatics who have been running Iran since 1979 are murderers, torturers and exporters of terrorism. They are despised, or at least unwanted, by most Iranians, and the Iranians who get caught expressing their opinions in this regard end up murdered, jailed, tortured or all three. Also, the regime has been an avowed and declared enemy of the United States for decades.<\/p>\n
That checks a lot of boxes for me.<\/p>\n
There are only really two major boxes left unchecked, as the Trump administration continues to amass in the region the largest concentration of American military power since the Iraq war.<\/p>\n
The first: Does the administration have a workable plan? In other words, can it succeed in attaining military victory and securing the country afterward?<\/p>\n
Nobody \u2014 at least nobody outside the administration \u2014 has any idea. That\u2019s because if President Trump goes through with a full-scale attack it will have been the single least-debated voluntary war in living memory, if not ever. The declaration of war on Japan, just one day after the Pearl Harbor attacks, was less debated, but for fairly obvious reasons.<\/p>\n
The second box to check is related to the first: Congress has not had any hearings about going to war in Iran, never mind authorized a war. And we should be clear, Congress\u2019 failure to greenlight a war doesn\u2019t mean the president is free to launch one. It means, as a constitutional matter, a war would be illegal.<\/p>\n
Think of it this way: If I don\u2019t have your permission to enter your home and take what I want, we\u2019re not in a gray area. The legal default setting is that you don\u2019t have permission to rob a person unless expressly told otherwise.<\/p>\n
But my point here is not to write the billionth column on Congress\u2019 abdication of its constitutional role or to do my bit in the war on insomnia by offering yet another tedious discussion of the War Powers Act.<\/p>\n
Rather, it\u2019s to illustrate a different point: If you are in favor of the constitutional process only when you like the results, you aren\u2019t actually in favor of the Constitution.<\/p>\n
In the debates over Trump\u2019s rogue presidency, defenders \u2014 including Trump himself \u2014 will often argue that X needed to be done as a way to sidestep the question of whether he had the authority to do X.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how much of the debate over Trump\u2019s tariffs, and the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn them, went. Trump says the tariffs are good and important, and therefore the court should allow them. When the justices didn\u2019t get his back, Trump slandered the majority by saying they were \u201cswayed by foreign interests.\u201d He also said they were cowards, unpatriotic, dumb, etc.<\/p>\n
This is the same president who said, \u201cI have great respect for the Supreme Court<\/a>\u201d not that long ago. What he respects are enablers.<\/p>\n