In a stunning display of doing something other than rubber-stamping the executive's wilder whims, the United States Congress has actually, and without the aid of smelling salts, decided to curtail the President's ability to waltz into a military conflict with Iran. The vote, a bipartisan thrashing of the sort usually reserved for tax hikes or denying themselves a pay rise, saw the House and Senate override a veto from the man who once famously said he could bring peace to the Middle East over a cheeseburger. Which he did, but it was his own cheeseburger and he ate it in the White House while tweeting about windmills causing cancer.
The historic legislation, titled with the optimism of a man about to be hit by a bus but hoping it's a BMW, asserts that the President cannot simply declare 'Ok, we're at war now,' unless Congress gives the nod. This is, of course, how the Constitution always intended it, but for the past few decades, the document has been treated like a particularly flimsy gazebo in a hurricane: theoretically protective but mostly ignored until the weather turns.
Now, this seems straightforward, but we are talking about a political system where a man can fund a wall with money meant for hurricane relief and still claim he saved Puerto Rico with paper towels. So let's unpack the sheer audacity of this rebuke. The President, a man who has fired more people than a firing squad at a firing-range convention, was told, in no uncertain terms, that he cannot simply drag the nation into a quagmire that makes Vietnam look like a garden party. The vote, which passed with the narrowest of margins in the Senate but with the thud of a falling safe in the House, was a direct challenge to the Commander-in-Chief's authority. It was a slap in the face with a wet haddock of democratic procedure.
And the reaction from the Oval Office? A tornado of tweets so furious they likely caused a minor seismic event in Mar-a-Lago. He called the vote 'a dangerous and insulting move' by 'do-nothing Democrats and a few stray Republicans who have forgotten who signs their paychecks.' Which is rich coming from a man who signs blank cheques to fake universities. But it's the thought that counts, even if the thought is 'I will now scream into a pillow designed by Ivanka.'
The ironies here are thicker than a Fiverr gig. The same Congress that rolled over for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, that endorsed the assassination of a foreign general via drone without a whisper of due process, suddenly found its backbone when the spectre of actual, boots-on-the-ground combat arose. It's as if they've been saving up their civic courage for a special occasion, like a rainy day fund of backbone they dip into only when the alternative might involve casualties in their own districts.
But let's not be too cynical. This is a victory for the anti-war movement, a rare win for sanity in a town where sanity is usually asked to wait outside while the suits decide whose lobbyists get the biggest slice of the defence budget. It's a reminder that the Constitution isn't just a prop for photo-ops with bald eagles, but a living document that occasionally gets to flex its muscles and tell the executive to sit down and pipe down.
So, Congress has spoken. They've told Trump, in the politest way possible, that they will not be dragged into a war that everyone except the Fox News prime-time lineup agrees would be a disaster. Whether this holds water when the next crisis arises is anyone's guess. But for now, we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the world's largest military will not be unleashed by a tweet. At least, not this one.
