War With Syria and Iraq

How Many More Body Bags Will Come Home?

Once again, a president has taken us to war without a Declaration of War by the U.S. Congress, as required by the U.S. Constitution. The military is attacking the positions of “militants” in Syria and Iraq, also killing some of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The attacks are in retaliation for the attack by “militants” on an American base in Jordan, which killed three U.S. Army troops and injured dozens.

The White House hasn’t announced it yet, but Biden probably is working under the 2001 AUMF – Authorization of Use of Military Force – by Congress passed a week after 9/11. It essentially gave the president carte blanche to attack anyone, anywhere on the planet, without so much as a wink from Congress. Because Congress is made up of cowards. Attempts to repeal the AUMF, most recently the bipartisan S.316 from last fall, have gone nowhere.

The three killed Americans were part of the Georgia National Guard. People like them join the Guard to help out with state natural disasters, maybe quell a riot; along the way getting some training in a skill plus the G.I. Bill. It’s a pretty good deal – f the president doesn’t send you to some godforsaken desert hellhole to get killed. There was no sensible reason why they and the other troops are in Jordan, or anywhere else in the Middle East, except to act as a “tripwire” for attacks by Iran-connected “militants.”

Something new in this latest undeclared war was the interviews within hours of the families of the dead, spread across social media. It was so sad. Such is the development of technology. Indeed, the microprocessor revolution, which continues unabated making technology cheaper and better, made possible both the interviews with the families and the cheap drones and missiles used by the “militants.”

The Declaration of War Clause of the Constitution is crucial because the Founding Fathers didn’t want to copy what were called “Cabinet Wars,” in which the king and his ministers decided whether or not to go to war, with little input from Parliament. Its only power, a real one, was to cut off funds for the wars. Much as the U.S. Congress cut off funding for the Vietnam War in 1975. And as the Republican House now may be doing with the funding for the Ukraine War.

But it was supposed to be different here. Also different was supposed to be American non-interventionism, now derided as “isolationism” anytime someone like me objects to yet another dumb war. Actually, the recent wars are what has been isolating America. Notice how Russia, pushed away from America and Europe, cozied up even more to China and Iran. BRICS – Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa – soon will bring in Iran and other countries, possibly including Saudi Arabia. China also brokered détente between longtime enemies Tehran and Riyadh.

George Washington, the Father of our country, said it best in his Farewell Address: “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”

Iraq War Blowback

Also notice how recent events show how dumb Bush’s 2003 Iraq War was. Saddam was tamed and happy to work with the Americans. Despite Bush’s lies, Saddam obviously had gotten rid of his “weapons of mass destruction,” the alleged causus belli for the invasion. But he was overthrown, and hanged by the U.S. puppet regime put in power. Saddam’s demise dumped from power his minority Sunni Muslims and put in charge the majority Shiites – who quickly allied with their fellow Shiites in Iran. Much of the country also fell into chaos, and remains in chaos. Which is where the “militants” have been acting. By removing Saddam, Iran then could ignore any threat of an invasion from Iraq, such as it repelled during the long, bloody Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. That has freed Iran to concentrate on other things – such as making mischief throughout the Mideast, including in the areas of Iraq and Syria Biden is bombing.

The Iran of 2024 also is not the nearly defeated, bankrupt Iran of 1980. It has been rebuilt and now is a major industrial power. Early on in the Ukraine War, it supplied excellent drones to Russia. Russia since has vastly improved such drones – in return transferring that and other military technology to Tehran. It was another result of the blunder of Biden and the neocons’ anti-Russia policy.

Here are the missiles Iran now wields. It’s from the neocon Center for Strategic and International Studies, so not a noninterventionist site:

Also, consider Iran’s population increase of recent decades. Its 88 million people are more than four times the 22 million of Iraq at the time of the 2003 U.S. invasion. There’s no way America’s small, “woke” Army could mount a land invasion. It would be decimated like Ukraine’s troops were last year during their failed counteroffensive.

That’s why Biden is conducting what’s called a “proportional” response. Because if he directly attacked Iran proper, especially Tehran and other populous cities, Iran could respond by sending home not just three, but thousands of body bags filled with American troops. The Mullahs also could decimate large sections of Israel. Although that might bring a nuclear response from Israel, possibly leading the whole world into the abyss of nuclear annihilation. But Iran itself doesn’t really need nuclear weapons when its tens of thousands of conventional missiles can do the genocidal job.

Most Americans still don’t grasp what I mentioned above: That our great inventions, largely designed right here in Silicon Valley in California, have leveled the weapons playing field among nations. And that is just going to keep happening. The Houthi “militants” in Yemen are a prime example. The country is dirt poor. Yet the Houthis can get some cheap, accurate drones and other missiles from Iran – or, maybe, black market weapons from what the U.S. gave to Ukraine – and use them to shut down Red Sea shipping.

Americans also should realize a corollary to the above: That we no longer are the “sole remaining superpower” that goes about slaying monsters to enforce the “rules-based international order.” China and Russia are equals in military and economic power. India is climbing to that level fast. Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Brazil and other countries are major players.

What’s needed is negotiations with all the major players. Instead, we get war, rumors of war, and more war.