This is a great take from Matt Yglesias on the strikes in Iran. In yesterday’s Slow Boring mailbag he had a good answer to a question about Congress reasserting its role in declaring war and authorizing military action. The problem is the Presidential system that we have makes it very difficult to end up with Congress actually controlling when military action happens and this goes back to the early decades of the republic.
I’m in the military and would personally prefer not to have to go to war, so I’m a bit biased. But I do think the fact that there was not even any notification given to congress prior to teh strikes to be egregious. There was no emergency which required this war to happen now. As Yglesias says in his post on X, the JCPOA was an alternative that could have been left in place and given time to work.
Here we are though, with a corrupt administration that likes to hide truths and manipulate information to make itself look good. It’s a terrible mix to oversee a war, but hopefully it works out for the best.