So, Um--

     I picked the wrong Friday to skip posting.  The stuff I had in mind is largely moot, because as of middle-on-the-night thirty, we are at war, or as close as make no difference, especially if you live in Iran.  Or, in fact. Israel, or on or near a U. S. military base in the Middle East.  The Iranians haven't targeted embassies yet.  We didn't warn 'em to get non-combatants out of target zones -- or warn our own service spouses and families, for that matter. 

     But that's not the first teensy oversight.  Congress didn't get a chance to weigh in, either, and there are no indications they're planning to.  This is hinky, considering that the declaring of wars would be a power the United States Constitution (perhaps you have heard of it?) reserved exclusively to the actual legislators of the actual legislative branch.  Cynics will point out the Presidents have sounded the bugle and sent the troops marching off multiple times in the last century; from the Korean War onward, Presents have acted and Congress has scrambled to catch up, usually slapping a hasty authorization onto a fait accompli or some other Italian speed job.

     Nevertheless, 'tain't according to Hoyle or, in this case, all but one of the delegates to the Constutional Convention:
     "Pierce Butler of South Carolina was the only delegate to the Philadelphia Convention who suggested giving the executive the power to take offensive military action. He suggested that even if the President should be able to do so, he, in practice, would have the character not to do so without mass support. Elbridge Gerry, a delegate from Massachusetts, summed up the majority viewpoint saying he 'never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war.' George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, and other contemporaries voiced similar sentiments."
     That's how Wikipedia puts it, as of this writing.  If you want to argue with the guys who were there, knock yourself out -- but you're wrong.

     Then there's on other finicky detail--  The Iranian government are bad guys.  They executed a large number of protesters recently, as in thousands, almost certainly tens of thousands, most of who had done no more than ditch work or school to go wave signs and shout, and they're a known source of material support for Mideastern (and other) terror organizations.  They're not nice guys; the West helped make them that way, but they have stayed that way and give no sign of backing down.  However, they hadn't started a fight with the United States.*

     Jus ad bellum is the notion that nation-states cannot (well, should not) just start up wars for the hell of it.  It's why heads of state or legislative bodies issue justifications when that's talking absolute smack, like Vladimir Putin's assertion that Ukraine ought to be part of Russia because, well, it always was, and therefore it is perfectly okay to send in the Russian military to kill 'em until they go along with his notion.  Defensive war is held to be inherently justified: when Ukraine fights back, they're acting by the rules, and in defense, a country can even war partisan war, using informal troops without clear lines of command.  But the aggressor has got to show cause, and a country's got to be behaving very badly indeed before it's okay under international laws and treaties to try to knock sense into them.

     There is an entire messy body of international agreement covering this stuff, one that boils down to "Nation-states don't get to start wars unless they can establish a broad consensus the state being warred against is extraordinarily bad, but nation-states can always defend themselves against wars someone else started against them."  We...didn't manged to fulfill either one of those conditions.

     Do I think the United States government is a better government than the government of Iran?  I sure do.  They kill far fewer of the people who protest against them.  On a per-capita basis, it's a stunning difference.  Do I think Iran's government is a threat to peace in the Middle East?  Unquestionably.  --But that doesn't justify an undeclared war, set in motion by the Executive Branch of the U.S. government without formal declaration (by Congress, whose responsibility it is) or even the merest fig leaf of justification.

     Putin's war on Ukraine is still worse than Trump's war on Iran but make no mistake, they're different intensities of the same bloody color.

     Time will tell how this will play out and in the meantime, your "peace President," the guy I was told would keep this nation out of foreign wars, has launched yet another military intervention into another country, and it's not a quick bombing run or an overnight "Mission: Impossible" leader kidnapping.

     And in the meantime, how about that economy?  How about those Epstein files?  How about cratering Presidential approval ratings?  ...Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain!  The Big Giant Head is talking, and what it's saying is, "War! War!War!"
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*In fact, we were in diplomatic talks, albeit "indirect" ones, which is perhaps the most grade school method of diplomacy, "Millicent won't let you sit with her at lunch until you stop chewing on pencils," one side says to an intermediary, and the other side replies to the go-between, "Well, Millicent chews on her braids and and it's gross, and besides, she farts all the time and you can tell her I said that," and then a spokesthing announces to the press that they had a productive discussion, while waving a toothmarked pencil to clear away a faint, lingering stench.