Trump needs a declaration of war to win the war with Iran
by Michael McKenna · The Washington TimesOPINION:
A few days ago, a friend of mine decided that he wanted to argue about the war with Iran.
His principal argument was that the United States was justified in attacking Iran because that nation was working diligently toward getting nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. It had, over the years, called America the “Great Satan” that deserved to be attacked with nuclear weapons.
As much as I may agree with the need to attack Iran and degrade — but not, apparently, destroy — its ability to shoot nuclear weapons at us, respect for the Constitution and common sense require a president to seek a declaration of war before he or she commits the nation to war.
Obviously, the need for surprise may require that such a declaration of war occur after hostilities have begun. In this case, however, we are now nearly seven months into the war, have suffered casualties, have had military installations damaged and have had allies attacked.
There has been enough time and enough provocation to get around to requesting a declaration of war.
My friend is a lawyer. I assume he has had the occasion to take an oath to uphold the Constitution. Despite that, he believes that the threat posed by Iran is sufficient to vitiate that oath. He is neither alone nor correct in that belief.
The simple reality is that we are not Spartans or Romans. Declarations of war are essential to the success of the American military. Only a fully committed nation can win a war, no matter how victory is defined.
It is not coincidental that the last war we won, World War II, was also the last war we declared. Since then, the list of wars undeclared and not won — Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq — has been long and tragic.
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The lesson is clear: When the military fights wars, the nation wins wars.
Some view the Constitution and the historical record as trivialities compared with the threat posed by whichever enemy we are worried about today. They may be right. Yet for good or ill, here in the United States, voters eventually get a say in pretty much everything the government does.
If you want something to succeed in the long run, you will need to convince voters that your plan is the right one.
This election cycle, for instance, is now all about the war with Iran and its consequences. Not surprisingly, voters are less than enthusiastic about high energy prices and the attendant economic deterioration. Perhaps that would be attenuated if someone had articulated or could consistently articulate specific and achievable goals with respect to the war.
To date, however, no one has.
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Voters are left paying the price for a war that no one asked them about and for which no one has offered any explanation of what victory might look like. Small wonder there is discontent among the voting population.
Declarations of war commit a nation, set the course and, in most cases, give citizens a pretty good sense of what we are trying to achieve through force of arms. They allow voters to assess whether the costs of war — always borne by the citizenry — are worth what the nation hopes to achieve by resorting to violence.
Without declarations of war, we are left to rely on the preferences of presidents with respect to which problems require us to kill people and risk American dead and wounded and which do not.
It is not terribly difficult to see that such an approach is unsustainable in the long run.
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• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times. He has taken the oath to uphold the Constitution several times.
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