Highlights
Welcome to this week’s Pentagon Rundown. Given the pace of the news cycle, we broke from our regular Friday publishing cadence to get this out today.
The ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran has once again revealed the longstanding tension between the Office of the President of the United States and Congress over which branch of the government ultimately wields the power to wage war — a fight that’s become tilted in the executive branch’s favor in recent decades due to political inertia stemming from the Global War on Terrorism era.
On Tuesday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) announced he had introduced a resolution supported by more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers intended to prevent President Donald Trump from ordering the U.S. military to attack Iran without a declaration of war or authorization for use of military force.
“The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to unilaterally commit an act of war against a sovereign nation that hasn’t attacked the United States,” Massie said in a statement on Tuesday. “Congress has the sole power to declare war against Iran. The ongoing war between Israel and Iran is not our war. Even if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution.”
However, the reality is that Congress ceded its power to declare war to the president nearly 25 years ago, and it’s going to have a hard time clawing it back. Just one week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Congress gave the president authorization to strike back at any country, group, or person involved with the attacks “to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.” Still in effect, the authorization has served as the legal basis for U.S. military operations unrelated to 9/11, such as when President Barack Obama ordered airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
Also still in effect, Congress gave the president power in 2002 to “defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.” The authorization allowed President George W. Bush to launch the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and during President Trump’s first term, it was also used as the legal justification for the January 2020 U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force.
If that weren’t enough, President Joe Biden claimed in 2021 that he had the power to order U.S. “defensive” airstrikes against Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq and Syria under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which gives members the right of self-defense, and Article II of the Constitution, which designates the president as commander in chief of the armed forces. Retired Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman at the time, told reporters in June 2021 that Article II gave Biden the authority to protect U.S. troops.
For its part, Congress has not successfully repealed those authorizations for the use of military force, even though it came close in 2023 when the Senate voted to rescind the 2002 authorization, but the effort stalled in the House of Representatives.
While the War Powers Resolution requires presidents to end military operations conducted without the approval of Congress after 60 days, past administrations have disregarded it, said David Janovsky, acting director of the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, a non-partisan watchdog group.
“It shouldn’t be read as a 60-day blank check for the president to go use the military however they want and then knock it off,” Janovsky told Task & Purpose. “We’ve seen presidents treat it that way in the past, though, and that’s, I think, a really big problem.”
Needless to say, Task & Purpose will be watching events in the Middle East closely and reporting how U.S. troops are affected.
The latest on Task & Purpose
- Sailors who can’t deploy will be moved to empty jobs under Navy program
- Air Force relieves commander of pilot training squadron
- US military’s highest ranking transgender officer says separation process is broken
- Army bringing in big tech executives as lieutenant colonels
- Trump reverts 7 Army bases to former names with new honorees, including Delta Force soldier
