My column is out at Truthdig is out, entitled “The World Is Safer Without a Republican House”
Excerpt:
‘ Although Congress for the most part leaves foreign policy to the president, it can occasionally intervene pivotally in that arena, as when it shot down Woodrow Wilson’s plan to have the U.S. join the League of Nations. Obama’s hopes for better relations with the Muslim world were based on a renewed U.S.-brokered peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, on direct negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, on gradually bringing the Afghanistan war to an end after an initial troop surge, and on a military withdrawal from Iraq. If the freshman class of 2010 comes into town riding atop elephants, it is likely to contribute to the failure of these policies, some of which were already in trouble, and thus to worsen U.S. security. ‘
Read the whole thing.
You are probably right that Congress would not declare war on Iran, but still … wouldn’t it be ironic if that was the way they chose to rediscover and exercise one of their key Constitutional powers and prerogatives? It might sound implausible that it would happen, but it is possible — they just might spin their extreme rhetoric until in goes out of control. It is likely that the Senate would be a brake on such a movement. It’s interesting that the Constitution reserves the war-declaring power to Congress but doesn’t specify beyond that how it actually takes place. So we can’t rule it out.
” … thus to worsen U.S. security. ”
Some Americans will profit from this circumstance.