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War

From when I was a small child I thought the founders of the US made a good decision in separating the power to declare war (Congress) from the power to execute war (the President as Commander-In-Chief). Who in their right mind would want one person, possibly unstable, to be able to commit a powerful nation to bloodshed?

In my lifetime Congress has ceded this power to presidents. They let LBJ commit us to war in Vietnam. They gave George W. Bush carte blanche to do anything he wanted in the "fight against terrorism", a remarkably nebulous phrase to guide our acts of violence toward something constructive.

Now, under Republican leadership, Congress just doesn't care any more. Trump and Israel have started bombing Iran.

Bombing is cheap (our soldiers don't risk anything on the ground) in terms of public outcry and despite self-serving uses of the word "surgical" by the military regularly kill non-combatants. It is the knee-jerk belligerence we have come to expect from leaders anxious to assert their machismo with minimal cost in public opinion.

I wish the Iranian government wasn't so repressive and supportive of violence in the Middle East. Should I burn my house down because of it? That would be silly, true, but more importantly it would not make things better. No explanation is forthcoming about how bombing Iran will make things better.

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