Most people only have a very vague idea how US national security and foreign policy decisions are made.
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@HeavenlyPossum @richpuchalsky as a statement of rule that is correct. But the formal structure includes a process whereby people who know what they're doing will put arguments to the President that what he wants is a bad idea. And also it includes people who will in the end say to the President, no, that order is illegal, I will not do it. Very few such people are left under Trump's administration. 1/2
@HeavenlyPossum @richpuchalsky and finally the President's authority is not absolute; it is bounded by law. Arguably, he has already exceeded his authority by sending troops into action without the authority of Congress.
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@HeavenlyPossum @richpuchalsky as a statement of rule that is correct. But the formal structure includes a process whereby people who know what they're doing will put arguments to the President that what he wants is a bad idea. And also it includes people who will in the end say to the President, no, that order is illegal, I will not do it. Very few such people are left under Trump's administration. 1/2
All of the same officers who served under Biden are now obediently following Trump’s obviously and blatantly illegal orders.
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@HeavenlyPossum @richpuchalsky and finally the President's authority is not absolute; it is bounded by law. Arguably, he has already exceeded his authority by sending troops into action without the authority of Congress.
Biden violated the law when he directed material support to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the interagency process did not stop him.
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Some of them were trying to hold a vote this week, which honestly might have prompted Trump to act now before they could.
Congress could always impeach him for violating the constitution (lmao).
@HeavenlyPossum I remember when I was a kid, thinking impeachment was a real thing that could effect Bush Jr.
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Remember when Pete Hegseth demanded all the general and flag officers of the US armed forces gather to hear him deliver a TED talk, and they all sat stony-faced, oozing with contempt?
There was a lot of liberal glee at the thought of how much they hated him, how aware they were that he was a charlatan and a fraud. *The non-political, professional military will surely save us!* How’s that working out for you now? All of these officers took an oath to uphold the constitution, and every single one of them participating in this attack on Iran is blatantly participating in a violation of the US constitution. The president has no constitutional authority to launch this war, a power reserved by the constitution for congress. There is no AUMF this time, no plausible excuse or deniability. And they all followed orders and launched the war anyway.
I hope this at least gives the “Trump can’t just seize power, the military won’t follow orders like that” crowd *some* doubt.
it's worth considering there is significant legal gray area that ties the hands of service members. I don't think this is obviously illegal.
Using a non-statutory title for the DoD? an obvious, small, but meaningful violation of the oath of office.
But I'd argue the 9/11 AUMF is still vague and broad. There have been many actions in the last year I do think are illegal, but it's not obvious to me that this one is.
I don't think, from an oath of office perspective, attacking Iran is significantly different from the countless other military actions in the middle east that the US has taken since 9/11.
ETA: I do agree with your central point though: I wouldn't expect the US Military to save America from fascism.
second edit to note a trusted legal expert says I'm wrong here.
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it's worth considering there is significant legal gray area that ties the hands of service members. I don't think this is obviously illegal.
Using a non-statutory title for the DoD? an obvious, small, but meaningful violation of the oath of office.
But I'd argue the 9/11 AUMF is still vague and broad. There have been many actions in the last year I do think are illegal, but it's not obvious to me that this one is.
I don't think, from an oath of office perspective, attacking Iran is significantly different from the countless other military actions in the middle east that the US has taken since 9/11.
ETA: I do agree with your central point though: I wouldn't expect the US Military to save America from fascism.
second edit to note a trusted legal expert says I'm wrong here.
If a massive attack against another country, in disproportion to any immediate threat, without a declaration of war, with the goal of overthrowing that country’s government isn’t illegal, then the concept of legality is meaningless.
(Which of course it always has been.)
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So many people will die, in Iran and elsewhere in the region, to achieve something unclear, with no ability to identify operational objectives that would allow the US to evaluate whether it has made progress towards its strategic goals (because it doesn’t have any).
The Saudis tried this in Yemen starting in 2015; they’re still fighting there, while the Huthis still rule much of the country. Let’s see how this latest war works out for the US.
@HeavenlyPossum I think it achieves distraction from the Epstein files, which is all Trump is about
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Something important to understand about fascism is that it is first and foremost an *aesthetic*, one that plays out through power, violence, and cruelty but that never rises above the level of play-acting.
Fascists don’t care about things like knowledge and process and actively refuse to engage with them as part of their aesthetic of LARPing as the bravest, strongest, cruelest, coolest kids on the block. A US President has, at his disposal, an apparatus of turning his objectives into material reality of almost unthinkable capacity.
A vast intelligence apparatus for know in about the world. A vast bureaucratic apparatus for figuring out useful policies for achieving outcomes in the world. A vast apparatus of violence for hurting people with either precision or indiscriminately on a global scale. If Trump and his coterie were *not* fascists, they might be even more terrifying.
But they are fascists, which means they don’t advance beyond the level of “we want to hurt someone, so we’re going to give the order for someone to be hurt immediately and without deliberation or consideration.”
They are undoubtedly less dangerous than they could be because they don’t care about and can’t think past the most superficial level of an aesthetic of power and violence. They just want the bombs to fall, right now, doesn’t matter where or on whom, no questions asked.
This is why fascists can’t really build institutions or institutional capacity, but can only really cannibalize the capacity of institutions they seize until they have exhausted or destroyed them.
Like, the US just went to war with Iran and its secretary of defense has been busy tweeting about how woke the Boy Scouts are and trying to shake down an AI company while his department shoots down the drones of another US government agency because none of these people can or want to do the jobs they were appointed to do.
They want to look like they’re doing the jobs they *imagine* they were appointed to do, which are mostly fantasy versions based on some tv and movies, shaped by their own innate fascist impulses and bottomless greed.
But these are not serious people and they cannot perform serious tasks. In addition to all of the people they will murder in places like Iran, they will causes many more people to die through incompetence and malfeasance.
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Remember when Pete Hegseth demanded all the general and flag officers of the US armed forces gather to hear him deliver a TED talk, and they all sat stony-faced, oozing with contempt?
There was a lot of liberal glee at the thought of how much they hated him, how aware they were that he was a charlatan and a fraud. *The non-political, professional military will surely save us!* How’s that working out for you now? All of these officers took an oath to uphold the constitution, and every single one of them participating in this attack on Iran is blatantly participating in a violation of the US constitution. The president has no constitutional authority to launch this war, a power reserved by the constitution for congress. There is no AUMF this time, no plausible excuse or deniability. And they all followed orders and launched the war anyway.
I hope this at least gives the “Trump can’t just seize power, the military won’t follow orders like that” crowd *some* doubt.
@HeavenlyPossum This feeling that that military officers would take seriously their oath to the Constitution is mainly an American position. Everybody else realizes that in the history of the world, armies have *always* followed orders from the leadership, legal, ethical, obeying laws of conflict or not.
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Like, the US just went to war with Iran and its secretary of defense has been busy tweeting about how woke the Boy Scouts are and trying to shake down an AI company while his department shoots down the drones of another US government agency because none of these people can or want to do the jobs they were appointed to do.
They want to look like they’re doing the jobs they *imagine* they were appointed to do, which are mostly fantasy versions based on some tv and movies, shaped by their own innate fascist impulses and bottomless greed.
But these are not serious people and they cannot perform serious tasks. In addition to all of the people they will murder in places like Iran, they will causes many more people to die through incompetence and malfeasance.
"... they will cause many more people to die through incompetence and malfeasance."
They already have.
They cancelled USAID.
They're letting immigrants die in concentration camps and killing protesters.
They've cut SNAP and Medicaid money for blue states.
They encouraged Gaza genocide.
They're trying to eliminate trans people, more of whom will commit suicide.
They've changed the vaccine schedule and defunded vaccine research.
And so much more...
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If a massive attack against another country, in disproportion to any immediate threat, without a declaration of war, with the goal of overthrowing that country’s government isn’t illegal, then the concept of legality is meaningless.
(Which of course it always has been.)
@HeavenlyPossum @jianmin i still think this is all about money and power and how the MIC have been calling the shots since the 1960s, but I am cynical as shit
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If a massive attack against another country, in disproportion to any immediate threat, without a declaration of war, with the goal of overthrowing that country’s government isn’t illegal, then the concept of legality is meaningless.
(Which of course it always has been.)
Yes the AUMF was used for specifically this reason in Iraq. The 9/11 AUMF is extremely broad and enduring until Congress ends it:
> the President is authorized to use all
necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations,
or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the
terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such
organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of
international terrorism against the United States by such nations,
organizations or persons.https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/23/text/enr
it's not the legality of an attack on Iran that has prevented every prior president from acting.
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I’m not sure how to explain this distinction without sounding like an apologist for Cold War presidents—which I absolutely am not—but there seems to me to be an important distinction between a rational process and an irrational one, even if only from the perspective of “how effective is this evil empire at achieving its evil goals.”
Trump has, for example, started a war that has, for the first time ever, resulted in direct and *damaging* retaliation against US military facilities in Bahrain. This is something that previous acts of aggression did not provoke, because those were all carefully calibrated in terms of means, goals, and risks. In this case, Trump has *wrecklessly* ignored risks to his own assets because he is not just pursuing irrational or evil goals, but also because he is doing so in a haphazard and irrational fashion.
If anything, this is good news for accelerationists.
It's not a major thing, but I still disagree. Take the gradual US escalation in Vietnam, for example. None of the Presidents involved ever went through a rational process of carefully considering means, goals, and risks.
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Yes the AUMF was used for specifically this reason in Iraq. The 9/11 AUMF is extremely broad and enduring until Congress ends it:
> the President is authorized to use all
necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations,
or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the
terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such
organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of
international terrorism against the United States by such nations,
organizations or persons.https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/23/text/enr
it's not the legality of an attack on Iran that has prevented every prior president from acting.
Trump has not even bothered to pretend that the AUMF extends to Iran in 2026.
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Trump has not even bothered to pretend that the AUMF extends to Iran in 2026.
does it matter? The legality doesn't hinge on the public statements from the executive.
you're calling the character of the military officers into question and expecting them to face prison or worse on something that is quite legal
if this is about the boats in the Atlantic and Pacific, that's a different story.
but it's very easy to draw a direct line from Iran to 9/11 within the language of the AUMF.
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does it matter? The legality doesn't hinge on the public statements from the executive.
you're calling the character of the military officers into question and expecting them to face prison or worse on something that is quite legal
if this is about the boats in the Atlantic and Pacific, that's a different story.
but it's very easy to draw a direct line from Iran to 9/11 within the language of the AUMF.
It’s not, though.
The AUMF did not specifically authorize war against Iran or war generally against any actor the president chooses. While subsequent presidents have stretched its plausible application to ISIS and random groups in places like Niger, Iran is quite obviously not covered by the AUMF and Trump has not invoked the AUMF to justify his latest attack. This war is, in its entirety, illegal under the US constitution.
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It’s not, though.
The AUMF did not specifically authorize war against Iran or war generally against any actor the president chooses. While subsequent presidents have stretched its plausible application to ISIS and random groups in places like Niger, Iran is quite obviously not covered by the AUMF and Trump has not invoked the AUMF to justify his latest attack. This war is, in its entirety, illegal under the US constitution.
the only thing necessary for the AUMF to apply to Iran is if the president determines they aided or harbored such organizations or persons who were involved with 9/11.
You're underestimating just how broad the 9/11 AUMF is. He can make that determination in private or in public. it doesn't have to be the sole purpose. The law doesn't even require the determination to be accurate.
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the only thing necessary for the AUMF to apply to Iran is if the president determines they aided or harbored such organizations or persons who were involved with 9/11.
You're underestimating just how broad the 9/11 AUMF is. He can make that determination in private or in public. it doesn't have to be the sole purpose. The law doesn't even require the determination to be accurate.
Trump hasn’t made that determination and they did not play that role.
Again, the AUMF was not a blanket authorization for the president to invade Canada if he wanted to make up a connection to 9/11. Even if it were, *he has not invoked the AUMF*.
I don’t expect anyone to be held accountable for so blatantly violating the constitution or following such blatantly illegal orders, because the US political system is not designed to do that.
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It's not a major thing, but I still disagree. Take the gradual US escalation in Vietnam, for example. None of the Presidents involved ever went through a rational process of carefully considering means, goals, and risks.
They absolutely did! That was a golden age of the interagency process and the ascendency of national security advisors like Kissinger. Noting that the process was rational does not mean that the policies they recommended were good or that the president would somehow correctly pick the “best” option. Of course they messed up! But there was at least a process, in contrast to one person’s whim.
I don’t want to convey the impression that I think the US security apparatus is good or does good things or is how we should structure society. I’m just trying to explain what is functionally different, including the rapid erosion of this state capacity. I think this is evidence that the US state is rapidly shaking itself apart.
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They absolutely did! That was a golden age of the interagency process and the ascendency of national security advisors like Kissinger. Noting that the process was rational does not mean that the policies they recommended were good or that the president would somehow correctly pick the “best” option. Of course they messed up! But there was at least a process, in contrast to one person’s whim.
I don’t want to convey the impression that I think the US security apparatus is good or does good things or is how we should structure society. I’m just trying to explain what is functionally different, including the rapid erosion of this state capacity. I think this is evidence that the US state is rapidly shaking itself apart.
As I wrote before, this isn't a major disagreement, but I think that "the golden age of the interagency process" was a rationalization. The President had a whim and people had a long drawn out activity of pretending to advise, pretending to plan, and in general telling each other that it was a rational process.
