In 1990-91, the United States sent a large military force to Saudi Arabia and subsequently to Kuwait and Iraq to defeat Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait. Two years later, Islamists reacted to our “desecration” of their land by setting off a bomb at the World Trade Center in New York.
Ten years later, Islamists hijacked airplanes in the United States and used them as weapons to destroy the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York killing more than 2,000 people, attacking and damaging the Pentagon, killing more Americans, and attempting to destroy either the Capitol or the White House in Washington — an attempt foiled by the courageous passengers of Flight 93. Those Islamist attacks on September 11, 2001, resulted in the futile, endless, and costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Global War on Terror.
As the Trump administration ponders joining Israel’s war with Iran, it should factor in its consideration such unintended consequences of war.
The lead-up to the first Gulf War involved extensive debate in Congress, which passed a resolution authorizing the president to use whatever force was necessary to evict Iraq from Kuwait. The United Nations passed a similar resolution. But there was no congressional declaration of war. (RELATED: Why Democrats Are Dodging the Iran Debate)
Similarly, prior to the Afghan and Iraq wars, Congress passed resolutions authorizing the president to wage war but refrained from actually declaring war against Iraq and our terrorist enemies. In the current Israel–Iran War, there has been no formal debate by Congress on whether this country should join Israel in going to war against Iran. Congress once again has abandoned its constitutional responsibility to determine whether this nation should go to war. (RELATED: When American Power Meets Jewish Survival)
Indeed, the last time Congress declared war was after Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor in World War II, yet since then, we have fought wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, and a Global War on Terror. One would hope that the people’s representatives would take greater care before allowing a president to commit this country to wage war, given the reality of the unintended consequences of war. A few congressional voices have raised this concern, but most of our legislators seem to be content to let the president alone decide on whether to go to war against Iran. (RELATED: Avoiding the Third World Wars)
In his compelling study of what went wrong in the Vietnam War, Col. Harry Summers noted that a key reason was that President Lyndon Johnson “made a conscious decision not to mobilize the American people — to invoke the national will — for the Vietnam War.” He and the “limited war theorists,” Summers wrote, “excluded the American people from the strategic equation.”
Our leaders operated under “the delusion that we could disregard not only the form of a declaration of war but also its substance — the mobilization of the American people.” Defense Secretary Robert McNamara even argued that “[t]he greatest contribution Vietnam is making — right or wrong is beside the point — is that it is developing an ability in the United States to fight a limited war, to go to war without the necessity of arousing the public ire.”
As events later demonstrated, right or wrong was not beside the point. Summers concluded that the “failure to invoke the national will was one of the major strategic failures of the Vietnam War,” because “a declaration of war makes the prosecution of the war a shared responsibility of both the government and the American people.” The great theorist of war, Carl von Clausewitz, emphasized the important relationship in all wars between the government, the armed services, and the people. The initiation and prosecution of America’s involvement in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terror removed one aspect — arguably the most important — of Clausewitz’s trinity: the people.
As commander-in-chief, the president has the power to use the armed forces to repel attacks and resist invasions, but in the current Israel–Iran war, we have not been attacked or invaded. If we go to war against Iran — and bombing the Iranian nuclear facility at Fordo would be an act of war — it will be a war of choice and should constitutionally result from a congressional declaration of war. That, however, is unlikely. President Trump has made it clear that he alone will decide whether America’s armed forces directly join this war. The people — through their representatives — will again be left out of the decision.
The supporters of an American strike on Iran’s Fordo nuclear complex claim that no American ground forces will be necessary and our involvement will be limited to striking the Fordo facility from the air. But this claim ignores the unintended consequences of war. What Clausewitz termed “friction” is always present in war.
Plans and operations go wrong for a variety of reasons. Remember the debacle of Jimmy Carter’s Iran hostage rescue mission on April 24, 1980: Navy helicopters took off from the aircraft carrier Nimitz in the Arabian Sea, traveled 600 miles to meet up with C-130 transport planes in the Iranian desert. An unexpected sandstorm damaged aircraft and hampered visibility, and several crew members became sick. Carter aborted the mission, and during the departure from the desert, a helicopter crashed into a C-130, killing eight members of the rescue team.
But even a successful American strike will have consequences that our leaders better think about: Iran trying to close the Strait of Hormuz; Iran targeting our many bases and military personnel in the region through missile attacks or terrorist attacks; Iranian “sleeper cells” in the United States carrying out acts of sabotage, terror, or assassination. Any of these actions on Iran’s part may lead to the sending of American ground troops to Iran, a country of 95 million people with armed forces much more powerful than Iraq’s in 2003.
And what if we and the Israelis are successful in bringing about regime change — which many neoconservatives in this country are urging Trump to achieve? What comes next? Do our armed forces occupy parts of Iran until a stable government can be formed? What happens if, as in Iraq, an insurgency resists U.S. occupying forces?
A nuclear-armed Iran posed an existential threat to Israel. Israel’s attack was justified. But Iran does not pose an existential threat to the United States. And experts say that Israel has already significantly set back Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and probably has the capability to render the Fordo nuclear complex unusable. So why do we need to get directly involved in this war? These are questions and issues that the Trump administration and Congress should be discussing and debating before this nation goes to war.
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