WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s War on Iran is the latest, and probably the worst, of Trump’s trampling on the U.S. Constitution, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., says.
And if lawmakers have any courage to stand up to a would-be dictator, they’ll vote for War Powers Act resolutions during the first week of March, he adds.
Murphy’s assessment was the bulk of his speech on March 2 to the annual legislative conference of J Street, the progressive Jewish organization which is pro-peace, pro-two-state solution, and—unlike Trump—very pro-democracy.
And the fate of democracy, in both the U.S. and Israel, is linked to the effort to stop the war and the constitutional overreach by Trump and his ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The war began just after 1 a.m. on March 1, when U.S. and Israeli warplanes—many of them bought with U.S. aid dollars and supplied by U.S. manufacturers—attacked Iranian bases, nuclear weapons facilities, airfields, and other key infrastructure in the Islamic Republic.
One bomb hit the building housing Iran’s supreme ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, killing him, his wife, his daughter-in-law, and his granddaughter. Another demolished a girls’ elementary school, which allegedly was next door to a base, killing at least 150 children and injuring almost as many.
As might be expected, the war intruded on other themes and sessions at the 3-day conference, with March 1 and 2 devoted to U.S. politics, Israeli-Arab relations, the future of Gaza, standing up for the Palestinians, and how the U.S. Jewish community—with a large anti-Netanyahu majority—could help defeat the PM’s annexation plans for the Palestinians’ West Bank. The third day was devoted to lobbying.
Then Trump and Netanyahu began the war, and they still haven’t explained why, which set off alarm bells for Murphy.
“Our government has been captured by a man who thinks he is a king,” Murphy began. “And he will sacrifice American lives to accomplish what he wants.”
“The Middle East is exploding,” he explained, a reference to Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, all U.S. allies, client states, and/or bases for U.S. forces.
But Trump persists in “his refusal to” conduct the war “without the consent of Congress,” and in violating the Constitution by doing so, the senator declared. “That’s a serious threat,” he emphasized.
By the time Murphy spoke, four U.S. service members had been killed and another six—bomber crew members—had parachuted out of planes shot down by “friendly fire” from Kuwaiti warplanes.
With both Israel and the U.S. under the sway of tyrannical rulers, the answer “must be to speak up,” not just for love of both countries, “but for democracy,” the senator said. “The rescue of democracy must be essential and enduring.
“But everywhere we turn, democracy is being threatened not by what happens in Tehran or Tel Aviv, but by what happens here at home,” he warned. And it won’t happen all at once, but bit by bit.
Which means complacent U.S. citizens may not realize democracy is going, if not gone, until it’s too late to stop the slide, he said.
That, by the way, is what happened to the Jews of Europe in the run-up to World War II in 1939, Murphy said. At a conference in Geneva, where Jewish leader Golda Meir was relegated to being a spectator because she was female, delegates from 32 nations deplored German Führer Adolf Hitler’s increasing repression of the continent’s six million Jews—and then said their hands were tied.
Understandably, Murphy told the more than 1,000 conferees, “You shouldn’t have to ask permission” to be liberated, or to defend your U.S. Constitution, either. So he praised the crowd for lobbying both for constitutional rights here at home and for the two-state solution with Israel and Palestine living in their respective territories side by side.
“But if preservation of democracy is vital, that means we have to activate the highest levels of our people to save it,” Murphy urged. “Our mission is not just to save a country,” the U.S., “but to save a way of life.”
While the crowd agreed with Murphy, speakers at one smaller seminar pointed out a rising problem regarding age differences in the community.
They cited a recent research poll, taken before the war began. It showed a sharp division among U.S. Jews in support for Israel, but not on the standard liberal-conservative lines. It was youth versus age.
Older Jews, ranging from the ultra-Orthodox (and pro-Republican) minority to the progressive wings of Judaism who dominate J Street and heavily criticize the Netanyahu government, still support Israel’s right to exist. But that government’s militarism and extremism have soured younger Jews, as only 9% of those aged 18-24 agree.
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