On June 21, US president Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. You may have heard. As I write this, we\u2019re in the \u201cboasting about how splendid it all is\u201d phase of Trump\u2019s cyclical foreign policy approach.<\/p>\n
Phase One: Pretend to be \u201canti-war\u201d and feverishly \u201cnegotiating\u201d to avoid escalation of this or that long-term conflict.<\/p>\n
Phase Two:\u00a0 Escalate.<\/p>\n
Phase Three: Brag about what a genius he is.<\/p>\n
Phase Four: Backtrack and maybe whine a little when it blows up in his face \u2013 or, rather, in the faces of the troops he puts in harm\u2019s way.<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen whether we\u2019ll get the usual Phase Four (a la the ignominious but long overdue US surrender in Afghanistan after his \u201csurge,\u201d the Iranian strikes on US bases in Iraq after his operation to murder Iranian general\u00a0 Qasem Soleimani, etc.), or whether he\u2019ll really screw the pooch and set the Middle East on fire this time when the Iranians retaliate.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, let\u2019s talk about the US Constitution.<\/p>\n
This morning, I received an email from Defending Rights and Dissent, a pro-Constitution organization with a history stretching back to the era of McCarthyism.\u00a0 Subject line: \u201cTrump shreds the Constitution. Bombs Iran. TAKE ACTION.\u201d<\/p>\n
DRAD wants you to write \u201cyour\u201d US Representative and US Senators<\/a>, urging them to support a \u201cWar Powers Resolution\u201d requiring Trump to stand down, on the clear and irrefutable constitutional claim that only Congress has the authority to declare war and that Trump\u2019s actions are therefore illegal.<\/p>\n Okay, yeah, I did that.<\/p>\n But realistically, Congress isn\u2019t any more likely to reassert its power over US war-making this time around than it did with Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and numerous other belligerent actions\/involvements.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been living in a \u201cpost-constitutional\u201d era, featuring an \u201cimperial\u201d presidency, for at least 80 years, with Congress exercising about as much power as the Roman Senate under the Caesars.<\/p>\n How do we know that?\u00a0 The latest unimpeachable evidence for the claim is that Trump wasn\u2019t impeached on the evening of June 21 and convicted and removed from office on the morning of June 22. The prosecution rests, and the defense has no case.<\/p>\n As Lysander Spooner noted in 1870, \u201cwhether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain \u2013 that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether the Constitution was a good idea and whether it ever \u201cworked\u201d are interesting questions, but for all practical purposes, it ceased to exist as anything other than low-quality toilet paper decades ago, if not longer.<\/p>\n Self-help gurus agree: The first step toward solving your problem is admitting you have one.<\/p>\n Until we face the cold, hard fact that the \u201cAmerica\u201d we learned about in high school civics classes is a myth \u2013 created by, and maintained for the benefit of, an imperial political class at humankind\u2019s expense \u2013 we won\u2019t be able to move on to anything better.<\/p>\n Thomas L. Knapp (X:\u00a0@thomaslknapp<\/a>\u00a0| Bluesky:\u00a0@knappster.bsky.social\u00a0<\/a>| Mastodon:\u00a0@knappster<\/a>) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On June 21, US president Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. You may have heard. As I write this, we\u2019re in the \u201cboasting about how splendid it all is\u201d phase of Trump\u2019s cyclical foreign policy approach. Phase One: Pretend to be \u201canti-war\u201d and feverishly \u201cnegotiating\u201d to avoid escalation of this or that long-term […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[816],"class_list":["post-53930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53930"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53986,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53930\/revisions\/53986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53930"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=53930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}