No one expects the Democratic Party to support President Donald Trump’s bold decision to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program. However, they could at least be a little honest or consistent when speaking about the legality of Trump’s actions.
For example, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called Trump’s airstrikes “unconstitutional,” as did Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). This is odd because Pelosi and Klobuchar wholeheartedly supported former President Barack Obama’s war of regime change in Libya in 2011.
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Trump ordered a single night’s worth of bombings on three sites using seven B-2 bombers. He made it explicitly clear that the strikes were a one-time action, and he has no intention of trying to topple the current Iranian government.
Pelosi and Klobuchar want us to believe this action was unconstitutional since Trump did not first seek Congress’s permission.
But in 2011, Obama used more than 125 aircraft to bomb Libya over 1,000 times over several months, with the explicit goal of ending Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. As then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bragged at the time, “We came, we saw, he died.”
Yet, for this far more intense, lethal, and protracted military conflict, Klobuchar and Pelosi saw no need for Obama to get Congress’s permission.
The reality is that Trump’s limited strikes on Iran were perfectly legal. The 2001 authorization for the use of military force passed by Congress authorizes the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the U.S. by such nations, organizations or persons.”
Considering that the 9/11 Commission’s final report concluded that, “There is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers,” this makes Iran a perfectly legal target.
Many have argued that the 2001 authorization of military force is too broad and should be repealed. That is a reasonable argument, but it hasn’t happened yet. The 2001 AUMF is still a good law, and Trump has every right to use it.
However, former President Bill Clinton had no such legal basis when he deployed U.S. troops to Haiti in 1994, bombed Bosnia in 1995, bombed Iraq in 1996, nor bombed Sudan in 1998. And yet Democrats did not call any of these military strikes unconstitutional.
Neither did they complain when Obama droned civilians across the Middle East throughout his entire presidency.
Democrats can argue that allowing Iran to enrich uranium way past what is needed for civilian use and giving them billions of dollars to fund terrorist proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah is a better alternative than destroying Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon. However, the argument doesn’t equate to the fact that the strikes were illegal, especially after their past support for military actions by Democratic presidents.
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As long as we are on the subject, the Constitution clearly requires the president to get Senate approval for all treaties with foreign nations. By any definition, Obama’s agreement with Iran, allowing it to continue its nuclear program, was a treaty. Yet it was never submitted to the Senate for approval.
If anyone’s Iranian strategy is unconstitutional, it is Obama’s and the Democrats’.