Both sides now: The cons and pros of 'Operation Epic Fury'
A young lawyer once asked an old Washington hand what to expect when he went down to work for a U.S. Senate committee. The old hand, who'd worked in the Capitol for years, reflected. “Here's the thing, son,” he replied. “Things ain't all on the level down here.”
The point was reconfirmed last week, after the Trump administration launched a military campaign against the Iranian regime in conjunction with Israel, which America dubbed “Operation Epic Fury.” The president who derided former President Joe Biden for “getting us into” Russia's war against Ukraine by organizing military aid so that Ukraine could defend itself ordered an attack that actually involves American service members, some of whom have already lost their lives.
The guy who just eight months ago proclaimed that Iran's nuclear program had been “obliterated” justified the current attack on the grounds that Iran had a nuclear program. That he felt no need to obtain congressional approval despite constitutional and statutory requirements that he do so was unsurprising, since he maintains that neither the judiciary nor Congress can, or should be able to, limit what he does. And the paucity of support that he has from Americans is also unsurprising, the inevitable result of relentless falsehoods uttered 24/7.
Those who note that the outcome of the attack on Iran is unknowable are correct. They point to cocksure military campaigns in the Mideast that have ended badly, like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, which cost heartbreaking numbers of American lives and breathtaking amounts of American treasure.
Former President Harry Truman is famously said to have pined for a “one-armed economist.” “All my economists,” he complained, “say 'On one hand this, but on the other hand that.'” In the case of the strikes against Iran, there is another hand.
Democrats hasten to acknowledge that Iran, long recognized by administrations of both parties as the world's foremost state sponsor of terror, is a brutal regime, responsible for death and destruction across the globe: in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Israel, South America and Europe. It holds the Mideast hostage. It has murdered countless Americans and plotted to assassinate American leaders. It provides Russia with the drones that murder Ukrainians nightly. And no one other than the credulous believes it isn't working hard to obtain nuclear warheads to go along with its thousands of ballistic missiles.
For years, American politicians have mouthed the familiar incantation that simply doing nothing about Iran was “unacceptable.” Yet mouthing that very incantation is what we have done, and repeating the word “unacceptable” can't possibly be acceptable.
Democrats argue that Trump's military action is illegal because he failed to obtain congressional authorization for it. Maybe so. But they seem to overlook that in the not-very-distant past, Democratic presidents have done the same in taking military action against regimes whose misconduct was considerably more localized than that of Iran, and which posed considerably less of a threat to America than Iran does.
In 1999, former President Bill Clinton ordered two and a half months of bombing in the Balkans to stop Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing there. In 2011, former President Barack Obama ordered military strikes against Libya. Neither obtained congressional authorization. Both argued that it was unnecessary. Their fellow Democrats backed them. There is, of course, plenty of hypocrisy to go around: Republicans, who now defend Trump's actions as perfectly legitimate, accused Clinton and Obama of acting illegally.
Human rights advocates who now claim that the attacks against Iran are illegitimate have a similar consistency problem. They supported the bombing against Milosevic. And they have long cited as a profound failure of the Clinton administration its refusal to stop the Rwandan genocide in 1994 — a failure that Clinton himself acknowledges. No one suggests that Clinton would have had to first obtain congressional approval before intervening in Rwanda. And the Iranian regime, which has been responsible for the slaughter of thousands elsewhere, has in recent weeks alone massacred an estimated 30,000 of its own citizens simply for protesting against the regime, and will doubtless continue to do so.
There are valid arguments on both sides of the debate over the Iran strikes. But there's an opportunity, if we take it, to acknowledge that validity, express the common hope that the goals can be achieved quickly, and take up the business of stitching our ripped-apart country back together, somehow.
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