Even those Americans who strongly dislike President Donald Trump should recognize that a world without a nuclear-armed Iran is a safer place for both the United States and beyond.
But Trump derangement is blinding them.
On Saturday, the president and the US military successfully carried out a precise bombing of Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites, achieving this with no American casualties and minimal disruption to the Iranian population.
Yet now Trump is being bombarded with attacks here at home.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) criticized Trump’s action as “grossly unconstitutional,” a sentiment echoed by Representative Jim Himes (D-Conn.) and Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has previously disagreed with Trump on other matters.
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a chorus of other Democrats are calling for Trump’s impeachment.
New York City’s Democratic mayoral candidates — for whom Trump-hatred is a litmus test — are piling on.
Zohran Mamdani blasted Trump’s “unconstitutional military action,” and on social media Brad Lander slammed the president’s “reckless & unconstitutional strikes.”
These claims are crazy.
Prior presidents, most prominently Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, struck foreign targets without consulting Congress first — and even waged hostilities for months at a time without congressional authorization.
No one called for their impeachment.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who defended Obama’s non-congressionally-blessed military operations in Libya when she was House Minority Leader, slammed Trump, saying he “ignored the Constitution.”
Call her the Queen of Hypocrisy.
As for “ignoring the Constitution,” that’s simply false: Article II states “The President shall be Commander-in-Chief.”
Trump clearly acted within his Article II powers.
True, the document’s Article I gives Congress the power to declare war — but the United States hasn’t fought a declared war since World War II.
Yet the nation has waged at least 125 foreign military operations since then. Declarations of war are clearly an anachronism.
The Constitution contains a built-in tension between the branches over military deployments: Congress can exert its authority by refusing to fund ongoing military operations it opposes.
Congress limited and finally cut off funding for combat in Vietnam, effectively ending the war in response to rising public discontent.
Similarly, Congress used its power of the purse to curtail funds for paramilitary operations in Angola and Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s, and to end US military actions in Somalia and Rwanda in the 1990s.
War-weariness during the prolonged but undeclared Vietnam War led Congress to try to devise another method — the War Powers Resolution of 1973, designed to put guardrails around the president’s conduct of military operations and guarantee Congress’ involvement short of an actual war declaration.
But the resolution was controversial and ineffective from the minute it was enacted. Invoking it now, after 50 years of failure, is mere political theater.
President Richard Nixon opposed what he called its “dangerous and unconstitutional restrictions” on president authority. He vetoed it, but Congress overrode his veto.
President Ronald Reagan also insisted that no mere act of Congress could legitimately narrow the military powers the Constitution grants presidents.
Clinton waved off War Powers Resolution concerns when he launched cruise-missile attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998. The following year, he defied its restrictions to continue bombing in Kosovo.
No one talked of impeachment — at least not for that: Clinton was impeached for making love, not war.
Fast-forward to Operation Midnight Hammer, which obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities Saturday night.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was briefed about the strike before it occurred, said the “necessary, limited and targeted strike follows the history and tradition of similar military actions under presidents of both parties.”
All true.
Yet Republican Massie is teaming up with Democratic Rep. Rho Khanna to push a new resolution barring any further action against Iran without congressional approval.
Now that the mission has succeeded, let the debate begin. But let’s be clear what the debate is about.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is slamming Trump’s Saturday-night surprise, insisting that that no president “should be allowed to unilaterally march this nation into something as consequential as war.”
That distorts reality: Iran has been waging war against the United States for decades.
Iran’s leaders chant “Death to America.” Iranian proxies have attacked American oil tankers on the high seas, assassinated American troops at a US military post in Jordan and plotted Trump’s assassination.
All with impunity.
Trump’s strike against Iran’s nuclear capabilities took the cudgel out of the ayatollah’s hands.
No matter how Iran responds, its threat will be throttled — now that the bully has been de-nuked.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City.
