In an appearance on Fox News, former Democrat (and later Independent) Senator Joe Lieberman explained to viewers that there can be absolutely no debate about it: Trump had every right to take out Iranian terror-general Soleimani.
“This is very clear from the Constitution and common sense,” former Senator Joe Lieberman said on Fox News, “that if a president decides to take action like this he doesn’t have to tell the country, the world or have a vote in Congress, particularly the way modern warfare is when you think about it, he didn’t commit a lot of troops, he didn’t commit any American troops on the ground. Because of our extraordinary technological and intelligence capabilities, we dropped a drone on those vehicles. Five people were killed, including Soleimani.”
“There were,” he added, “no other injuries as a result.”
Former DEMOCRAT Senator Joe Lieberman: The constitution is very clear, @realDonaldTrump has the authority to conduct the air strike that killed Soleimani pic.twitter.com/BtDReGaoBN
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) January 6, 2020
In other words, this was a very limited military action, and the only ones to die were obvious bad guys who had killed Americans and who were planning to kill even more. At the same time, no actual troops were committed to it — this unlike, say, the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan — a supposed U.S. ally — and which, liberals told us back then were more than justified in taking.
Of course, he was indeed (legally and politically) allowed to do so without prior congressional approval — and so was Trump with regards to Soleimani. Nancy Pelosi’s approval was not required. Trump didn’t declare war on Iran. What he did was order a very limited strike aimed at a man who was considered “the world’s number one terrorist” by many in the intelligence community.
If the president doesn’t have the legal authority to order the U.S. military to take out a criminal like that, the office of the president might as well be abolished.
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