At 10 p.m. last night, the President of the United States looked the nation in the eye and told us something we’d been dreading: we just bombed Iran. Not a drone strike. Not a symbolic show of force. We dropped three 30,000-pound bunker busters on Iran’s underground nuclear facilities—Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan. Bombs meant to tear through rock and concrete and anything alive inside.
No congressional vote. No warning. No goddamn declaration of war.
And just like that, we’re in it.
This Was Not Self-Defense
Let’s knock off the theater. There was no missile attack on the homeland. No fleet of Iranian ships heading toward Norfolk. No last straw that gave us no choice but to act.
This was coordinated with—or more likely dictated by—Israel’s war cabinet, which has spent months dragging us closer to the cliff’s edge. A country knee-deep in its own campaign of brutality now has the U.S. standing guard at its flank, launching strikes that could set the whole region on fire.
You can’t justify this as a defensive move when Iran’s not the one invading. Gaza is rubble. Syria’s bleeding. Lebanon’s next. Israel has made itself into a battering ram, and Washington just handed over the sledgehammer.
No Authorization. No Excuse.
The Constitution says only Congress can declare war. That’s not some dusty old technicality. That’s the line between democracy and tyranny. And last night, it got bulldozed by a Commander in Chief with a hard-on for fireworks and no respect for limits.
There’s no AUMF that covers this. Iran isn’t ISIS. This isn’t 2001. We didn’t vote for this, and neither did Congress. Not even a debate. Just bombs.
If that doesn’t keep you up at night, you’re not paying attention.
Whose War Is This, Anyway?
This wasn’t about protecting Americans. It was about propping up a foreign ally that’s burning its neighbors to the ground and daring the world to stop it. And now we’re on the hook.
If Iran retaliates—and they will—American troops in Iraq, Syria, the Gulf, and maybe even at home will be in the crosshairs. Not because they had to be. Because someone decided they should be.
And while the Pentagon issues bland statements and cable news fills with recycled talking points, ask yourself this: Are you safer today than you were yesterday? Is the world?
Or did we just buy ourselves a ticket to a new forever war?
Congress, Do Your Damn Job
If there’s a spine left in the Capitol, now would be the time to find it. Congress must demand answers, hold hearings, block further escalation, and—if this was done outside the law—consider impeachment. Yes, impeachment. Because if launching a war without Congress doesn’t count, then what the hell does?
Where Were They Before the Bombs Dropped?
It’s great to see the the statements of outrage from our elected leaders coming in fast and furious. Sen. Elizabeth Warren called the strike unconstitutional. Sen. Ed Markey says it was reckless and unauthorized. Rep. Richie Neal went so far as to call it “insane.” That’s all well and good.
But where the hell has Congress, as a body tasked with checking the power of the White House, been?
The erosion of congressional war powers didn’t start last night. It didn’t start with Trump. This rot goes back generations—Vietnam, Korea, Panama, Iraq, Libya, Syria—undeclared wars, drone strikes, covert actions, and proxy wars launched without a shred of real democratic accountability. And let’s not pretend our own Massachusetts delegation hasn’t played along.
Warren, Markey, Neal—they’ve all rubber-stamped the machinery of empire at one point or another (though, to be faier Markey has forged a near sterling voting record against military expansionism since expressing regret of his 2002 Iraq War vote). They’ve nodded along while presidents—Democrat and Republican alike—ran roughshod over the War Powers Act, justified endless wars with recycled AUMFs, and funneled billions into the Pentagon without asking where the bombs would land.
So sure, it’s nice to hear them rediscover the Constitution when the sky lights up over Iran. But it’s a little rich hearing about democracy now, after decades of near silent complicity while we slid toward executive war-making as a default setting.
We don’t have to agree on every foreign policy detail to agree on this:
No president should be able to start a war alone.
And yet, here we are.
Empires don’t always fall with a bang. Sometimes they erode bit by bit, truth by truth, power by power. And sometimes, if you’re not watching closely, you miss the moment when the republic slips into something else entirely.
I think we just passed that moment.
And I’m not sure we can walk it back.
