5/16/19: Now that the president has dispatched an extra aircraft carrier group and other important military assets to the Middle East, to counter some amorphous “threat” from Iran, even GOP lawmakers are nervous. The fear is that the U.S. may stumble into war.
“I’m always leery to get us more heavily involved anywhere,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) tells reporters. “If we’re going to go to war somewhere, Congress ought to approve it.”
Sen. Rand Paul is even more direct in his warning to the president and his top aides:
I think it’s important
that the administration know that they do not have the permission of Congress
to go with Iran. The Constitution is very clear. Congress must declare war…We
want to be very clear to them they don’t have the prerogative to go to war
without our authority.
As for the influence of National Security Advisor John Bolton, Sen. Paul is blunt. Asked about Bolton’s role in dispatching all the extra war-fighting capabilities to a volatile region, Paul replies, “I fear that he’s a malignancy, a malignant influence on the administration.” Bolton, of course, was one of the preeminent cheerleaders behind the invasion of Iraq, which was going to be a cakewalk according to people like Bolton – and Cheney – and Rumsfeld – but did not turn out quite that way.
Liberals who questioned the decision to go to war with Iraq at the time were dismissed in right-wing circles as “unpatriotic.”
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