Yes, the Attack on Iran is Just Like World War III

Students in 1936 protesting against America entering World War II at Wayne University (now Wayne State University) in Detroit, Michigan

But not in the way that many on the extreme left and extreme right are claiming. At the start of World War II, FDR tried unsuccessfully to convince Americans that Europe needed our help and that the fate of Western Civilization was at stake. But America was just starting to come out of the Great Depression and had already spent blood and treasure bailing Europe out of a world war or, as today’s doomsayers would call it, a “forever war.”

Today, I had a call with No Labels, a truly rational, truly patriotic organization that is the only political organization I know that is actually nonpartisan. The leaders do not criticize a policy based on who is backing it but rather whether it is good for the country. And they encourage civil disagreement. Today’s call was with Republican Mike Lawler and Democrat Josh Gottheimer. I know enough about the U.S. Constitution, the War Powers Act, and current geopolitics to understand what’s at stake in Iran and what the consequences will be, but it was nice to hear two members of Congress from both parties understanding it as well.

Trump is fully in compliance with the constitution. In Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the sole power to formally declare war. But only an idiot or a liar would stop there. The Constitution also designates the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Navy, and state militias in Article II, Section 2, Clause 1.

Furthermore, there are hundreds of laws and court rulings that determine the details of the rights and constraints briefly described in the Constitution. Since the Civil War, the Supreme Court has ruled that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, can order military actions without Congressional approval. So much for the idiots and liars.

It’s usually the hypocrites in Congress who bring up the War Powers Act, which requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying troops and mandates their withdrawal within 60–90 days unless Congress declares war or authorizes an extension. Trump is fully in compliance with the War Powers Act. He actually notified Congress twenty-four hours before the attack. And he has a briefing scheduled later this week. Yet many of the Democrats in Congress who are now horrified by America’s attack on one of the most evil, repressive, belligerent regimes on the planet are the same people who were perfectly fine with Bill Clinton’s bombings of Kosovo, Obama’s 8-month attack on Libya, or Biden’s bombings in Iraq, all without Congressional approval. These hypocrites are not interested in law or justice but only gaining power for their party.

There has never been a ”forever war.” That’s a political statement designed to enrage people who don’t know history (yes, Trump used it for political purposes, too). Since the Korean War, all U.S. wars lasted weeks if not days. You can’t count a military occupation like that in Iraq or Afghanistan as a war. By that definition, our ongoing wars with Japan and Germany have lasted over 80 years. And we lost less lives in Iraq (4,400 over 8 years) and Afghanistan (2,400 over 20 years). That’s about the number of Americans that die in car accidents every month. If you believe that this is too high a cost for protecting liberty and freedom for the people in these countries while stopping terrorist groups from reconstituting and re-arming to attack Americans and American interests globally, then you should give up driving. And just about every other activity.

Trump is not starting a “forever war” but ending one. Iran engaged in acts of war starting 47-years ago by breaking into our embassy and taking hostages. Since then, Iran has bombed our embassy and our Marine barracks in Beirut, as well as five other attacks on American facilities and citizens. Iran sent assassins to kill our citizens, foreign dignitaries on our soil, and even our politicians and leaders including President Trump.

The recent war powers bill introduced by Republican Congressman Thomas Massie and Democrat Congressman Ro Khanna is suicidally stupid. It requires the immediate halting of all military actions against Iran. This is like interrupting a medical operation, even an unnecessary operation, after it has begun. That is the wrong time to object because the patient will die. Halting military operations now would endanger American citizens and allow the Iranian regime to rebuild and continue to oppress its own people and threaten the world. It’s an insane “solution.”

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese helped FDR convince America to go to war. Without our “interference,” the world would have been conquered by a genocidal monster and begun his Thousand Year Reich. Our freedoms would be gone. Millions of “inferior” people would have been exterminated. My entire family would have been murdered, and I would not be around to write this blog.

The extremists on the left mostly object because they hate Trump. Or, like Neville Chamberlain and Barack Obama, they believe that a murderous dictatorship, that recently has murdered tens of thousands of its own citizens, will be nice to us if we are simply nice to him. Obama turned his back on the Iranian people and gave 1.5 billion dollars to the Iranian regime and released another $150 billion in unrestricted dollars[1] without even a verifiable commitment from Iran in return in his toothless Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) , which Iran violated many times since its signing.

The extremists on the right believe that the Jews are behind this war with Iran because we are fighting for Israel not America, as if once Iran destroys the “little Satan” they will decide to live in peace with the “big Satan.”

To these people who object to the attack on Iran I ask, how will you live with yourself from now on? If the war is successful, it will defeat the Iranian regime and restore the lives of the 90 million Iranians living under its repression. It will incapacitate Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, which will allow the Palestinians to be free of their oppressors and make peace with Israel if they so choose. It will free Israel to accomplish even more than it does now. It will bring peace to the Middle East. It will eliminate the largest source of threats to U.S. citizens abroad and at home while taking away their potential to create a nuclear weapon to carry out their desire for a worldwide Islamist califate.

But to these appeasers, if we were to stop the attacks now, Iran will resume its pursuit of nuclear weapons, as intelligence reports confirm. And when the Ayatollahs have their nukes, and Israel is wiped off the map, and Jews are murdered throughout the world, and the New York and Los Angeles are obliterated, if the appeasers are still alive, will they be able to sleep? Will it matter?

Bob Zeidman is the creator of the field of software forensics and the founder of several successful high-tech Silicon Valley firms including Zeidman Consulting and Software Analysis and Forensic Engineering. He is the author of textbooks on engineering and intellectual property as well as award-winning screenplays and novels. His latest book is Election Hacks, the true story of how he challenged his own beliefs about voting machine hacking in the 2020 presidential election and made international news.

[1] This article makes the familiar claim that the U.S. did not give $150 billion to Iran but simply unfroze its assets. This is like saying we didn’t give money to a murderer, we just gave him back the money we owed him, to purchase bullets, while he held a gun to our head.