I am pro-war. By that I mean that this country should use military only by declaration of war, as set forth in The Constitution. [FN1] Three U.S. military personnel and 34 wounded in a drone attack in Jordan. [FN2] Iran’s denial of involvement means little in a US election year. 1/6

After all, what do these Arab countries have against the US? Iran’s people are of varied ethnicity, but the dominant group is Persian and its most common language is Farsi, not Arabic. [FN3] The people of Iran have legitimate beefs with the US. We backed the overthrow in 1953 of 2/6

Mohammad Mosaddegh, who sinned against interests of US corporations by nationalizing the oil reserves, The US backed a coup that installed the Shah. [FN4] In a way the US goal of removing Mosaddegh’s nationalization of oil worked. It became the Shah’s, an absolute monarch. 3/6

The Shah’s secret police, SAVAK were US-trained. They barred the doors of a cinema in the city of Abadan, then set it on fire. [FN5] When we blindly employ force, things do not go well. Later we supplied both sides in the Iran-Iraq War and, thereby, got oil cheap. 4/6

This brings me around to my point: we should require declarations of war. As for surprise attacks, after Pearl Harbor, we declared war the next day. There is nothing to indicate we would have saved lives. We have ourselves to blame for hatred against us. 5/6

Footnotes:
FN1. Art. I, §8.
FN2. Hjelmgaard, “Iran-linked drone strike that killed US troops highlights military vulnerability overseas,” USA Today, 01/29/24.
FN3. Wallechinsky and Wallace, “The People’s Almanac,” 1975, p. 409.
FN4. Id.
FN5. Khosrokhavar, “New Arab Revolutions that Shook the World,” (2016) 6/6.