From Townhall
When the bombs started falling on Iran, Americans on the hard right and hard left melted down quicker than the plastic slip covers on Ayatollah Khamenei’s couch: Israel had led America down this path. This is “Israel first!” There was no “imminent threat” to America. How does this improve Americans’ lives? In Congress, the opposition thundered that it was an “illegal” act of war.
They’re wrong on all counts.
First, the politicians. The Constitution gives only Congress the right to declare war but is silent on the commander-in-chief’s right to take military action. In fact, war has been declared very few times in our 250-year history, and never since 1941. The 1973 War Powers Resolution doesn’t supersede the Constitution. Constitutionally, the only say Congress has is the ability, through legislation, to refuse to fund the forces necessary to wage the conflict. President Trump has been building a military force in the Gulf region for weeks and not hiding it. Congress could have preemptively defunded the operation beforehand. It didn’t.
As for the activist left, which very much includes the legacy media, they’ve never met a U.S. military action they didn’t hate. No news of jubilation from inside and outside Iran can convince them that the Trump administration has done the right and just thing, even though a month ago the regime killed at least 30,000 (low estimate) demonstrators and tortured and imprisoned many more and has been killing Americans for the past 47 years. The most ardent feminists and gay rights advocates look the other way on the regime’s daily oppression and even murder of those who transgress Sharia law.