On September 26, 2007, the Senate, by a vote of 76-22, including about half the Democrats, moved the United States one step closer to war with Iran.

The Senate did this by urging the President to add the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an arm of the Iranian state, to the list of international terrorist organizations.

This gives President Bush additional cover to use military force against Iran, which could include military raids into Iranian territory. We have been here before. This is how the Vietnam war was expanded into Laos and Cambodia, which led to the deaths of millions of Cambodians.

The result in this case could be the further radicalizing of the Islamic world, making us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks rather than less.

It is important to note that the President still has no explicit authority to attack Iran, but this won’t necessarily stop him. He has shown a great willingness to violate both statutory law and the constitutional limits on his power.
Under the President’s theory of the Unitary Executive he believes he has the authority to do anything he thinks is necessary to defend the nation. He asserts this right because of his constitutional role as Commander in Chief. What the President ignores is that his powers as Commander of Chief are limited by the requirement that Congress pass a formal Declaration of War before offensive military action is taken.

Foreign involvement in Iraq is a real problem. But so long as this administration insists on being a foreign power involved in Iraq, then Iranian intrusions must be dealt with by military action within Iraq’s borders, and only in Iraq. Better yet would be diplomatic negotiations in which we would offer Iran a comprehensive settlement. We are doing this with North Korea and it is working. We have failed to do this with Iran, which is why all of our previous negotiations have failed.

 

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