McCorkle: Trump undermines U.S. Constitution, democracy with attack on Iran

A supermajority of Americans don’t want war with Iran. Recent polling shows people are squarely against an escalation of tension with Iran. A recent University of Maryland survey showed that only 21% of Americans supported war with Iran. Another poll from the Economist/YouGov from last week showed 27% of Americans agreed with going to war.

Yet despite the will of a majority of Americans, President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered the bombings of Iran in coordination with Israel. The attacks killed the Grand Ayatollah, Ali Khamenei, and numerous Iranian military leaders. In the fallout was a bombing of a school where at least 153 people died.

The aerial violence, in turn, led Iran to respond by attacking Dubai, Jerusalem, and Bahrain. There were also attacks against U.S. facilities in Iraq and Pakistan. Iran also shut down the Strait of Hormuz through which 20% of the world’s oil flows.

There is no doubt the Islamic republic in Iran is a brutal and undemocratic regime, but it posed no real threat to the United States or Israel. Last June, Israel and the U.S. supposedly destroyed Iran’s nuclear capacities. This time Trump has indicated that this is now about complete regime change. It is not really about stopping nuclear weapons or U.S. security.

This new conflict, unlike the past attacks on Iran, will likely be much more widespread and hard to get out of easily if regime change is the real goal. It is relatively easy to decapitate a leader. It is much harder to actually change a government. Our past wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should be a historical warning.

The response, of course, garnered praise from Trump allies like South Carolina’s U.S. Lindsey Graham, who stated the attack was “the catalyst for the most historic change in the Middle East in a thousand years. In response to Western European allies calling for calm, Graham said, “You collectively are the ones that are wrong … suggesting we should continue to negotiate with religious Nazis. It is pathetic. How far Western Europe has fallen.”

In contrast, U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., offered a different perspective: “The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war for a reason: to ensure that such a consequential decision is made only after full consideration by the people’s representatives of the case for military action, the plan for success, the potential costs and any alternative options. The Trump administration, in disregarding this constitutional requirement in attacking Iran, has put American lives at risk despite the apparent absence of an imminent threat to our country or a coherent strategy to achieve a successful outcome.”

Clyburn’s comments should concern U.S. citizens because Trump’s actions in Iran were the moves of an aspiring strongman, not the president of a democratic and constitutional republic.

Though Congress has, over the years, surrendered some of its war powers to the presidency in emergency situations, the U.S. Constitution clearly states that only Congress has the power to declare war. The Founding Fathers were wise enough not to allow the president to declare war on a whim. That would be unthinkable in a constitutional republic where there is supposed to be limited government and a balance of power.

But, it seems we know little about this limited government anymore, and our executive, the president, has taken on far more power than most leaders in other Western nations. It is a sad irony that the Republican Party, a party that claims to stand for small government, has essentially endowed the president with the powers of a king. As a result, we are a less free country and more at the mercy of an erratic and compromised leader.

Of course, this is just part of the larger trend of Trump ignoring Congress, the courts, our laws and our constitution to do whatever he would like. But this latest attack might have far-reaching negative implications over time, as we can already see from Iran’s response.

Unfortunately, we’ve been forced into an untenable situation, thanks to Donald Trump, who many believe is trying to create another distraction from his close friendship with serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

What’s happening now in the Middle East – with bombings in Iran and its response throughout the Arab world and Israel – should really make us question whether we should still call ourselves a constitutional republic. As historian Heather Cox Richardson noted, “Trump’s attack on Iran scorns the will of the people and their constitutional right to decide whether they want to pay for a war with their money and their lives. That disdain for democratic government reveals that Trump’s military adventure against Iran is also fundamentally an attack on the United States of America.”

Before we worry about democracy in Iran, maybe we should ask if we have lost our own.

Will McCorkle is a Summerville resident who teaches at a local college.