The Act is an unconstitutional check on the President’s constitutional powers, and runs counter to the Founders’ understanding of Congress’s war powers.
It is imperative that Congress and the American people understand that the ongoing military operations against Iran are fully consistent with both international and constitutional law—and, unless undermined by Congress, could contribute to a new era of global peace and security.
But if Congress—out of ignorance, cowardice, or partisan motives—decides to undermine the Commander in Chief and again invoke the War Powers Resolution, it could produce consequences that dwarf the horrors that resulted when that unconstitutional statute was enacted in 1973. When U.S. forces were clearly winning on the ground in Vietnam (I was there during five of the last seven years of that conflict), Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by prohibiting the expenditure of Treasury funds to protect victims of Communist aggression.
As a result, millions of people lost their lives throughout Indochina, as did countless more as far away as Angola, Afghanistan, and Central America. Indeed, Osama bin Laden made it clear his decision to attack the United States on September 11 was motivated in part by his perception that America was unwilling to accept casualties—a message the president’s critics are again transmitting to tyrants around the world.
From the start, the War Powers Resolution was a fraud. By a combined vote of 504-2 (99.6%), Congress enacted a statute (Pub. Law 88-408) expressly declaring
[T]he United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the [SEATO] Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.
(Note this joint resolution—the same legal instrument historically used to “declare War”—authorized the use of military force to protect Cambodia as well as South Vietnam, as both were SEATO “protocol states.”)
Gallup polls registered a 30-point increase in LBJ’s approval rating surrounding the August 1964 decision—a 58% jump in his popularity. And, as the war escalated, the public and Congress continued to overwhelmingly support it for several years.
Even if one ignores its constitutional infirmities, by its own terms, the War Powers Resolution permits this bombing. Article 2(c)(2) specifically recognizes the president’s power to use armed forces without prior congressional approval following an “attack upon the United States...or its armed forces.” Iran’s long history of armed attacks against U.S. armed forces dates back at least to the October 23, 1983, terrorist truck bomb that killed 241 mostly sleeping Marines in Beirut—an attack declassified intelligence documents clearly show Iran ordered.
Tehran later provided a wide range of weapons, including IED’s, to terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan that were used to kill hundreds of additional American military personnel, and their proxy attacks on U.S. naval vessels and military bases in the Middle East have continued. Members of Congress who pretend that Iran was not behind the deaths of hundreds of American military personnel owe apologies to the families of all these brave Americans.
I authored two books (1983 and 1991) specifically about the War Powers Resolution and wrote a 1,700-page doctoral dissertation about “National Security and the Constitution” that included more than 3,000 footnotes—which, decades later, I am finally preparing for publication as a trilogy.
The dissertation documents that, on August 17, 1787, at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, James Madison proposed that the draft Constitution be altered and Congress given only the power “to declare War” rather than authority “to make War”—explaining that this would “leave the president free to respond to sudden attacks”—to act defensively but not aggressively.
“Declare War” was a term of art from the Law of Nations, and the preeminent scholars read by the Framers agreed that such declarations were only necessary for what today would be called “aggressive” wars. Thus, Dutch scholar Hugo Grotius (often called “the father of modern international law”) wrote in 1625: “[N]o declaration is required when one is repelling an invasion, or seeking to punish the actual author of some crime.” Italian jurist Alberico Gentili concurred: “[W]hen war is undertaken for the purpose of necessary defence, the declaration is not at all required.”
In 1928, the United States played a prominent role in gathering the civilized world in Paris to approve the Kellogg-Briand Treaty that outlawed war as an instrument of policy. This was reinforced when we invited representatives from fifty countries to San Francisco in 1945 to draft the UN Charter. (Americans received the Nobel Peace Prize for both contributions.)
Unless an American president decided to violate these treaties—which, under Article VI of the Constitution are part of the “supreme Law of the Land” that Article II requires the president to “take Care...be faithfully executed”—the Power of Congress “to declare War” is today as much an anachronism as the power given in the same clause to “grant letters of Marque and Reprisal“ (instruments outlawed by the 1856 Declaration of Paris).
No country has clearly issued a “declaration of War” against another country since World War II. However, if President Trump decided to invade Greenland or Panama in a non-defensive context, in addition to making him a war criminal (“Crimes Against Peace“) subject to being hanged under the Nuremberg precedents, only then would Congress retain its constitutional check.
In his first 1793 Pacificus essay, Alexander Hamilton explained that, as an “exception” to the broad “executive Power” vested in the president by Article II, “the power of the Legislature to declare war” was “to be construed strictly”—the same conclusion his rival Thomas Jefferson had reached three years earlier in a landmark memorandum to President Washington. More than a century later, the Supreme Court added that constitutional provisions “which blend action by the legislative branch, or by part of it, in the work of the executive, are limitations to be strictly construed, and not to be extended by implication.”
In 1801, when President Jefferson decided to send two-thirds of the new American Navy to the Mediterranean with instructions “to protect our commerce & chastise their insolence—by sinking, burning or destroying their ships & Vessels wherever you shall find them” if upon arriving in the Mediterranean they learned that any of the Barbary States had declared war against the United States, he did not formally inform Congress for more than six months—and no one in Congress complained he had acted improperly.
One wonders if the president’s critics in Congress have read either the Constitution or the UN Charter, which sets as its very first principle in Article 1(1): “to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace...” Article 51 provides in part: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations...”
Are the president’s critics oblivious to the reality that Iran and its agents have been launching armed attacks against Israel with regularity, killing more than 1,000 civilians, including Americans, on October 7, 2023, alone?
I have not even addressed the issue of “humanitarian intervention.” Iranian health officials told Time magazine that in just two days in January, “as many as 30,000 people [protesters] could have been killed in the streets of Iran.” UN agencies have repeatedly criticized Iran for its illegal nuclear weapons program, human rights violations, support for transnational terrorism, and the like—as has Congress itself. And then there is Iran’s long history of military support for Russia’s illegal aggression against Ukraine, which is arguably the greatest threat to international peace and security of this century.
To date, the U.S.-Israeli response to Iranian aggression has complied with both our Constitution and international law, and legislators who seek to undermine it may ultimately regret that decision.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/03/the_1973_war_powers_resolution_cannot_block_trump_s_actions_in_iran.html
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/03/trumps-iran-strikes-not-war-no-congressional-approval/
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/03/there_is_no_need_for_congress_to_declare_war_because_we_re_already_at_war.html
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