The War Powers Resolution is not a blank check for war | Reilly Neill

The conflict raging in Iran is a war of choice.

At the end of the Vietnam war, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to allow presidents to respond to genuine emergencies. The law allows limited military action when American forces face imminent danger. It does not authorize preventive wars based on hypothetical future threats.

War powers rest with Congress and the people, not any one person or administration.

There was no imminent attack from Iran on the United States. No American city was under threat, no missile launch was underway. No American base faced immediate assault. Administration officials justified the strikes as necessary to prevent a possible future attack, not self-defense.

When a war can be planned, Congress and the American people should be consulted. Congress was ignored, and only about a quarter of Americans support this attack on Iran.

Montanans send their sons and daughters to serve. We are losing lives now because of a dictator in Israel, a country with no college debt, with abortion as public healthcare, and all funded by trillions of our taxpayer dollars.

We are losing lives.

China and Russia are watching as we waste an armory and a military force that's taken generations to build. A serious nation does not squander its power for the whims of a dictator abroad.

We've seen wars of choice before. Iraq was justified by weapons of mass destruction that never existed. Libya promised stability and produced chaos. Afghanistan consumed twenty years of American lives and resources and ended where it began.

Iran is home to one of the oldest civilizations on earth, a culture with a history that stretches thousands of years before the United States existed. The region’s conflicts long predate modern governments.

The United States is not an empire. We're a free country that does not wage unnecessary wars to prove strength. War powers belong to the people, and the people were never asked.