If President Trump made the decision to assassinate the supreme leader of Iran, would he need to come to Congress to get authorization for it?
As you know, Leeās comments went viral Wednesday after he ripped into the briefing given to lawmakers about Trumpās decision to assassinate Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
Lee, echoing the complaints of many Democrats, blasted the briefing on the intelligence behind the assassination as the āworstā heād ever seen. He also fumed that officials refused to acknowledge any āhypotheticalā situations in which they would come to Congress for authorization for future military hostilities against Iran.
Now, in the interview with NPRās Rachel Martin, Lee has gone into more alarming detail. Lee reiterated that officials āwere unable or unwilling to identify any pointā at which theyād come to Congress for authorization for the use of military force. Then this exchange happened:
MARTIN: What kind of hypotheticals were you putting to them in hopes of understanding when the administration sees a need for Congressional authority?LEE: As I recall, one of my colleagues asked a hypothetical involving the Supreme Leader of Iran: If at that point, the United States government decided that it wanted to undertake a strike against him personally, recognizing that he would be a threat to the United States, would that require authorization for the use of military force?The fact that there was nothing but a refusal to answer that question was perhaps the most deeply upsetting thing to me in that meeting.
Obviously, this was an extreme hypothetical. But the point of it was to discern the contours of the administrationās sense of its own obligation to come to Congress for approval of future hostilities. And it succeeded in doing just that, demonstrating that they recognize no such obligation.
āIt would be hard to understand assassinating a foreign head of state as anything other than an act of war,ā Josh Chafetz, a Cornell law professor and the author of a book on Congressā hidden powers, told me. āItās appalling that executive-branch officials would imply, even in responding to a hypothetical question, that they do not need congressional authorization to do it.ā
āIf the administration wonāt concede that this is a clear example of when they would have to go to Congress, itās hard to imagine what would be,ā Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, added. āThis underscores just how completely irrelevant they view Congress to be in the war powers conversation.ā
In the NPR interview, Lee also disclosed that at one point in the briefing, an official ādiscouraged us from even having a debate on the Senate floorā about whether Congress should pass new measures constraining Trumpās authority to launch future military actions without authorization.
āThat might somehow embolden the Iranian regime in future attacks against the United States,ā Lee said, characterizing the argument the official made.
Itās worth stressing that this is emerging as the explicit position among Trumpās loyalists and propagandists. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) is now dismissing concerns about the need for Congress to reassert its warmaking authority as āemboldening the enemy.ā
Meanwhile, Trump just rage-tweeted that he wants āall House Republicansā to āvote against Crazy Nancy Pelosiās War Powers Resolution.ā
Thatās a reference to a measure that the House speaker is putting to a House vote Thursday that would require Trump to cease any military hostilities against Iran 30 days after enactment, if he hasnāt received congressional authorization for it. The House will all but certainly pass this, and there are other tougher measures on tap.
But we should be under no illusions about whatās happening here.
Itās great that Lee is aggressively calling out the administrationās willingness to abuse its war power. Lee is apparently going to vote for a measure in the Senate that is a companion to the House bill.
But despite this, the GOP-controlled Senate is still likely to block such efforts. Last spring, a similar measure failed to get the 60 votes needed for passage, with all but four GOP senators voting against it. Virtually all GOP senators will likely vote against the new one, too.
By the way, it requires restating: Former president Barack Obama abused the war power as well, and far too many congressional Democrats went along with it. Congress has been abdicating its war-declaring authority for decades.
Our system is now functionally that one person makes these extraordinarily consequential decisions. Plainly, the person in question is not fit to do so.
Indeed, in this case, youād think the starkness of the situation would get Congress ā or, more precisely, congressional Republicans, since virtually all Democrats will do the right thing this time ā to reassert its authority.
Trump has threatened war crimes, has boasted about the size of his missiles and just ordered an assassination of a senior military leader in a sovereign country without alerting Congress or seeking its approval, based on intelligence that is dubious at best and on rationales that have fallen apart.
But Trumpās tweet calling on āall House Republicansā to vote against the new war powers measure now means that being loyal to Trump is synonymous with giving him unconstrained warmaking authority, despite all the madness weāve seen. And so it shall be.
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