Among the other issues that the Trump administration has posed to American and global stability and security, there’s now a looming threat of war with Iran. This week on Twitter, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) joined the chorus of those trying to reel President Donald Trump and his associates back in. They’ve made a show of rhetoric against the prospect of taking their aggression to the military level, but their actions tell an entirely different story.
Omar shared:
‘Just as in Iraq, aggressors are using illegitimate pretexts to beat the drums of war. Just as in Iraq, our media is taking these claims at face value. Just as in Iraq, children will die, American lives will be lost, and the world will be less safe.’
The pretexts that Omar refers to include the allegation that Iran was behind a recent attack on two large tanker ships in the nearby and globally relevant Strait of Hormuz. Although they have denied involvement, the U.S. government claims to have evidence to the contrary, some of which it has shared. Although domestic opposition figures like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) have supported the notion of that evidence as legitimate and the United Kingdom has joined in on that same side, other allies have been much slower to adopt the Trump administration’s line of a dire warning about the supposed Iranian threat.
More recently — just hours before Omar spoke out — both the U.S. and Iran shared that Iran had shot down an American drone that it claimed had violated its airspace, an allegation the Trump administration unsurprisingly denies — and can thereby use as another basis to claim the Iranians are acting aggressively and mandating a military response.
During a recent television appearance, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested the administration could act without even consulting Congress at all, despite their clearly Constitutionally-mandated responsibility to declare war. In the following days, during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) tried to get a Pompeo adviser to acknowledge that the Constitution gives war powers to Congress, not the office of the Presidency, but the adviser adamantly refused — so Lieu submitted the Constitution itself for the record to go along with the testimony.
? Question: Does our Constitution give @POTUS the power to declare war?
?♂️ Answer: No
? Today in @HouseForeign Committee, U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook struggled to answer this very basic question, so we submitted the Constitution for the record. pic.twitter.com/SExJK8Y8CW
— Rep. Ted Lieu (@RepTedLieu) June 19, 2019
Check out Twitter’s response to Omar joining in the confrontation of the Trump team’s dangerous volatility…
Featured Image via screenshot
