Trump Unilaterally Slips the Dogs of War: What Lies Ahead?
President Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to plunge the United States into war against Iran is a war of his own making, not a war of necessity, but a war of choice. He has yet to explain, in a clear, coherent fashion, his reasons for going to war, either to Congress or to the American people. Five days after initiating war, striking more than 2000 targets in Iran, with six U.S. servicemen killed and three fighter jets downed, Trump should, by now, have explained to the American people, in a nationally televised address, what his objectives are, what his theory of victory is, and on what legal authority the administration believes it is waging this war, which Congress has neither declared nor authorized.
It is demonstrably clear that this war is illegal and unconstitutional. Few grieve the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, a cruel, monster of man who has, for decades, repressed and executed Iranian citizens, and nobody wants Iran to possess nuclear weapons, but the Constitution requires governmental officials, including the president, to obey its allocation of powers and responsibilities. The War Clause—Article 1, section 8, vests the sole and exclusive authority to “Declare War” and order lesser military hostilities in Congress, not the president. The framers of the Constitution, in the words of James Madison, denied to the executive the authority to “decide on matters of war and peace.” Congress, alone, Madison explained, has the power to “commence, continue and conclude war.” Trump has usurped that authority and insists, imperiously, that “it is too late for talks.”
This war is without legal scaffolding. The War Powers Act of 1973 does not afford a legal basis for Trump’s War. A war of choice, by definition, cannot be justified by statutory language that permits the introduction of troops into “circumstances” where “hostilities are imminent” when it is the president who initiates the hostilities.
Those who wrote the Constitution feared the unpredictable twists and turns of war, the chaos, destruction and tragedy that may result when a government, to borrow from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, decides to “let slip the dogs of war.” Thomas Jefferson, in a September 6,1789 letter to Madison, praised the shackles that the Constitutional Convention had imposed on unilateral executive warmaking. “We have already given one effectual check on the Dog of war, by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body.” But the constitutional wisdom summoned by the framers to render an “effectual check” on presidential warmaking can be rendered ineffectual by a recalcitrant executive.
The framers of the Constitution—to a man– agreed that the president should be barred from initiating war and military hostilities. They carved this unanimous commitment into the War Clause: “Congress shall have power to declare war.” George Mason spoke for the Convention when he declared that he was “against giving the power of war to the Executive because he was not safely entrusted with it.” Elbridge Gerry said a “motion to empower the executive” to “declare war” was antithetical to the premises of republicanism. James Wilson summed up the constitutional system for going to war. It is “calculated” to prevent a “single man” to “involve us in such distress.”
The framers’ wisdom on the assignment of the war power is as compelling today, indeed, likely more so, than it was in 1787. The founders were keenly aware of the calamitous consequences of warfare, but they could not have glimpsed the horrific effects of nuclear war. In a world in which a “single man” may “involve us in such distress,” the president, alone, may incinerate the planet. If, for one moment, you allow your imagination to contemplate the planet set afire by the intemperate judgment, erratic behavior and whims of a single person, you will recognize the wisdom of the framers in denying to the president the authority to take the nation to war.
President Trump’s choice to initiate hostilities, which he likened to the swift attack on Venezuela and the capture of President Maduro, what he called his “model” for Iran, crumbled in the first days of his strikes. Already, the broader Middle East War has engulfed 12 nations, killed more than 800 civilians, and caused the price of natural gas and oil to spike. Who knows how to predict what chaos, destruction and tragedy will afflict the world when the dogs of war have been slipped.