This Is Netanyahu's War, Congress Can Prevent It From Becoming Ours

The most clarifying moment in last week’s Congressional debate over Trump’s war in Iran came not from a Democrat, but from Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky — a conservative Republican, a Trump antagonist, and one of only two members of his party willing to say out loud what the Constitution plainly requires. “Our Constitution,” Massie said on the House floor, “provides Congress initiatory powers of war.” He lost, 212 to 219. But Massie was right. And the fact that a MAGA Congress couldn’t bring itself to agree with George Washington is the real story of how America stumbled into yet another Middle Eastern war it didn’t need to fight.

This one started with Israel. That is not a criticism — Israel faced genuine threats and made a sovereign decision to act on them. But Israel’s war is not automatically America’s war. When President Trump ordered strikes against Iran alongside Israel last weekend, he did so without a declaration of war, without a congressional authorization, and without producing a shred of evidence — even in classified briefings, according to Senator Tim Kaine — that the United States faced an imminent attack. He did not consult Congress. He notified a handful of leaders shortly before the bombs fell. That is not how a constitutional republic goes to war. That is how an empire does.

We have played this role before. And the receipts are extraordinary.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, U.S.-led wars since 2001 have directly killed an estimated 940,000 people and cost the United States $5.8 trillion. Harvard’s Kennedy School puts the true long-term figure well above $6 trillion, once you fully account for the decades of veterans’ care, disability payments, and interest on the debt we borrowed to fund the fighting. The Pentagon has already acknowledged that the U.S. is expected to spend at least another $2.2 trillion on veteran obligations alone through 2050 — long after the last troops have come home. With all the money we spent on Afghanistan and Iraq, we could have made Social Security solvent and given every American child a free college education, with trillions left over. Instead, we got the Taliban back in Kabul, a destabilized Iraq that strengthened Iran’s regional influence, and a Libya that collapsed into chaos the moment Gaddafi fell.

None of those wars ended with the outcome originally advertised. Not one. In March 2003, Dick Cheney assured a Meet the Press audience that Iraq would cost roughly $80 billion and be over quickly. Twenty years and trillions of dollars later, that war’s debt is still compounding on the federal balance sheet.

Last night, the Pentagon reported that the Iran War has already cost $11.3 billion dollars, and it’s clear there is no plan for the day after. President Trump is conducting this war by jazz improvisation, and this time we are bombing a nation of 92 million people with a sophisticated military, determined proxies across the region, the support of Russian intelligence and, reportedly, renewed nuclear ambitions.

Seven American service members are already dead. Iran has retaliated against U.S. allies. The war has already expanded to Lebanon, where more than 700,000 refugees are already on the move. The administration has declined to rule out ground troops. Massie’s prediction deserves to be quoted in full: “A war is never more popular than it is on the first day.”

The constitutional question here is not actually close, even if the politics are. Article I gives Congress — not the president — the power to declare war. The framers were deliberate about this. They had watched European monarchs drag nations into conflicts for dynastic reasons, personal grievances, and imperial appetite. They designed a system where war required collective deliberation, not executive impulse. George Washington, in a 1793 letter to William Moultrie, put it plainly: no offensive expedition of importance could be launched until Congress had deliberated and authorized it. Presidents of both parties have been chipping away at that principle for fifty years, and Congress has let them. The 1973 War Powers Resolution was supposed to be the guardrail. Instead, it has become a formality — something to be notified of, not obeyed.

The war powers votes this week were not a surprise. Most Republicans stood behind Trump; most Democrats pushed back. What made the debate remarkable was the bipartisan minority that refused to play along. Massie and Representative Ro Khanna of California — a conservative Republican and a progressive Democrat — co-authored the House resolution together. Senators Tim Kaine and Rand Paul co-sponsored the Senate version. These are not natural allies. They share almost nothing in their politics except a conviction that the Constitution is not optional. That bipartisan coalition was small, but it was real, and it deserves to grow.

The next move belongs to Congress, whether it knows it or not. The Pentagon is already burning through money it does not have. It will come to Capitol Hill soon with a supplemental appropriations request to fund expanded operations. That moment — not a symbolic war powers vote — is the real lever. Congress controls the purse. It always has. The question is whether enough members in both parties have the courage to use it.

The answer to that question will determine not just the fate of this particular war, but something larger: whether the United States is still a constitutional republic that goes to war through deliberation and consent, or a nation that has quietly decided to let one person make that call. Israel chose its war. Congress is choosing, through silence and party-line votes, to make it ours. That choice can still be reversed — but not if we wait for the lesson to finish teaching itself at the cost of another generation and another few trillion dollars.

We already know how this ends. We just keep paying to find out again.

About the Author: Jason Palmer is a technology entrepreneur and impact investor who currently serves as Senior Advisor to Renaissance Philanthropy and NCEE (National Center on Education and the Economy). In 2024, Jason was a Democratic candidate for President of the United States, becoming the first challenger to beat an incumbent in a primary in 44 years.