Where Is Congress?

As the president decides Iran’s future, the legislative branch descends to a new level of irrelevance

America struck Iran Saturday night, setting the world on edge. The move was done unilaterally by President Trump. Congress was uninvolved outside of a few leaders being briefed. A number of lawmakers complained that the move was unconstitutional, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vowing to draw up articles of impeachment against Trump.

Don’t bet on impeachment going far. Democratic leaders are either quietly supporting the strikes or issuing bland disagreements with how Trump went about it. Their base may be chanting “no more wars!” but Democrats want to focus on other matters. In the week leading up to the strike, with Israel bombing Iran and Trump threatening to join, Democrats continued to focus on the ICE raids. This isn’t an issue Trump’s opponents are going to rally behind, despite the unpopularity of escalating tensions with Iran.

The other side of the aisle is united behind Trump’s actions, with the exceptions of Thomas Massie and Rand Paul. Some Republicans want Trump to go further and topple the Iranian regime, a proposal the White House has dismissed. Whatever happens, it will be the president’s call, not Congress’s. The people’s body will play no role in the decision process. Impeachment threats or other attempts to rein in the president’s powers will fail. Foreign policy is all in the hands of the executive branch.

The strike further illustrates the impotence of the legislative branch and how many of its powers have been seized by the other branches of government. It also shows how the president can effectively wage war around the globe, within certain limits. As long as there are “no boots on the ground” and no American casualties, the president can bomb wherever he pleases and fund any war he wants. Congress can only sit back and approve funding, which lawmakers always do.

The last time Congress authorized military force was in 2002 against Iraq. We’ve since bombed Libya, ISIS, Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and now Iran. No president has been impeached over these actions. Obama, Biden, and Trump claimed they had the authority to make these strikes either from past authorizations of military force or claiming justification under the War Powers Act. Congress has chosen to not question these claims. The president can do what he wants here, regardless of the legal grounds. Our political culture is fine with the president bombing foreign targets without clear authorization.

It wasn’t always this way, even in the Cold War. Congress clawed back its power in the 70s to make foreign policy decisions, refusing to fund an intervention to save South Vietnam in ‘75 and unleashing the Church Committee to rein in the intelligence services. In the 1980s, Congress cut off funding for the Contras and imposed sanctions on South Africa against the president’s wishes. But since 9/11, the president has led and Congress has merely followed.

There are a few reasons for this. One, there’s an understanding in Washington D.C. that running the American empire shouldn’t be left to traditional democratic means. It’s better to leave it to the president and the deep state, who can act quickly and are less beholden to the people. Taking decision making away from the people’s house gives the empire greater freedom to do what it claims is necessary. We have a major military presence in several African countries Americans didn’t know existed. No one voted on this, but it’s carried on and hardly any lawmakers care about it. It’s just a normal part of the imperial mission. Congressmen and senators now inherently trust the Pentagon and intelligence community to do these things on their own.

9/11 had a transformative effect. We were no longer at war with a particular nation-state. It was transnational terrorism. That made politicians think we need to empower the government to act as it sees fit, and even strike particular nation-states if they’re deemed “terrorists.” We also felt these strikes wouldn’t trigger a traditional war. America would just bomb someone without any casualties. This is how it worked in Libya, Yemen, and, for the most part, Syria. The Iran strikes followed the recent trend of bombs with no American deaths. Americans no longer expect a foreign conflict to turn into Vietnam. They now expect us to bomb without real consequences.

Congress is now defined by partisanship and gridlock. In the Cold War years, Congress could reach consensus on civil rights, immigration expansions, and pushing Richard Nixon out of office. Generally, the consensus was liberal and not in the Right’s interest. In the ‘90s, Congress did reach a conservative consensus to crack down on crime and welfare abuse. In the 2000s, the consensus was for war. We thankfully haven’t reached any consensus since then. If Congress can’t even pass simple budget bills, how can we expect it to act decisively on foreign policy matters? Barring a Pearl Harbor-like attack, it would take forever to give the president authorization to use military force now. The empire demands quick action, not endless committee debates and hearings.

The one area where Congress is supposed to exert its power is over funding. Yet, Ukraine has shown that Congress just goes along with what the president wants.

Congress could demand its prerogative here. It could punish a president who doesn’t seek proper authorization before a bombing. But don’t expect it to happen any time soon. Democrats will soon forget about this and move on to other topics. “No war” won’t be the Democrats’ message for the midterms. Most Republican lawmakers will think this was awesome and some will hope he does it again. They have no desire to rein in the president’s war powers.

The growing irrelevance of Congress is one of the most important developments in modern America. We’re supposed to be a republic, guided by the people’s representatives who compromise to reach the best solution for the people. But in our polarized, multicultural society, those kinds of decisions are nearly impossible. Our lawmakers are mostly clowns rather than the virtuous gentlemen the Founders envisioned. Decision-making in foreign policy is handed off completely to the executive branch in this environment. Congress is just around to either cheer the president’s decisions or issue impotent threats about them. Either way, they’re going to back funding for whatever initiative the president chooses to do.

That’s just how our foreign policy works now. Congress isn’t really part of the equation anymore.