Trump's new war will face a reckoning — for his enablers: analysis

President Donald Trump seems intent on declaring war against Iran, a prominent conservative columnist wrote on Tuesday — and the people allowing him to do so without congressional approval are “enablers.”

“What he respects are enablers,” wrote Jonah Goldberg of the Los Angeles Times. The longtime right-wing writer admitted that he is personally in favor of regime change in Iran, describing the Iranian government as being composed of “Islamic fanatics” who regularly commit human rights violations and have “been an avowed and declared enemy of the United States for decades.” Yet Goldberg also expressed doubt that Trump has a “workable plan” for both winning the war and “securing the country afterward,” adding that even if he did, any attack on Iran would be “illegal” as a “constitutional matter” because Congress has yet to authorize it.

“Think of it this way: If I don’t have your permission to enter your home and take what I want, we’re not in a gray area,” Goldberg wrote. “The legal default setting is that you don’t have permission to rob a person unless expressly told otherwise.”

Even though Trump’s defenders argue that his un-Constitutional policies are justified because “X needed to be done,” Goldberg responded that people who think this way “aren’t actually in favor of the Constitution.” If you support a document’s arguments, Goldberg posited, then you have to follow them even when doing so is politically inconvenient.

In this respect, Goldberg accused much of his fellow Republican Party of failing. Instead Goldberg said too many are following the president’s line of reasoning.

“That’s how much of the debate over Trump’s tariffs, and the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn them, went,” Goldberg said. “Trump says the tariffs are good and important, and therefore the court should allow them. When the justices didn’t get his back, Trump slandered the majority by saying they were ‘swayed by foreign interests.’ He also said they were cowards, unpatriotic, dumb, etc.”

He added, “This is the same president who said, ‘I have great respect for the Supreme Court’ not that long ago. What he respects are enablers.”

Because Trump is trying to accomplish major policy goals without approval by and cooperation with at least one other branch, Goldberg concluded the president is behaving in a dangerously un-democratic way. This is the case, he asserted, regardless of whether he happens to support the specific policy goals in question.

“I thought — and continue to think — that Trump’s tariff policy is economic nonsense on stilts. So you might expect that I’d come out agreeing with the court’s decision. And I do,” Goldberg wrote. Yet he added that “I also think it would be a boon to mankind, especially the Iranian and the American people, if we could get rid of the fanatical Iranian regime (at a tolerable cost in lives and treasure).” Despite that opinion, however, “I still think he can’t do [Trump] at all without Congress’ approval.”

This is not the first time Goldberg has spoken out against the president. He previously condemned Republicans who support Trump for cult-like behavior, with The Bulwark’s conservative commentator Mona Charen describing that “he said it was watching people that he knew and believed he understood gradually become Trumpy was like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where people, they just were absorbed into this thing.”

Even when defending Trump earlier this month over posting a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys, Goldberg qualified his defense with a criticism.

“I take Trump at his word on this," Goldberg wrote. “... Trump's explanation is entirely plausible to me. He was stupid, lazy and irresponsible and forwarded a video only after watching it for 10 seconds. Doesn’t mean he wouldn't have still sent it if he watched the whole thing.”

He continued, “My point is, he posts irresponsible stuff all the time. And that's the thing I thought was most interesting about the Karoline Leavitt response is when they were in full defensive mode, she said, ‘Why don't quit with the fake outrage? Why don't you guys report about something the American people care about?’ And the problem is that Donald Trump is constantly screwing up their messaging by posting garbage like this, which is not what the American people care about. And then the media covers it.”

Goldberg has also previously criticized Trump’s tariffs as a “Caesarist argument” that only unchecked presidential power can protect America.

"Some — like Cincinnatus, George Washington or Abraham Lincoln — can resist, but all you need is one lesser mortal to be granted undue power for the whole experiment in republican government to come crashing down,” Goldberg wrote. “This was the history of republics until 1789, which is why Benjamin Franklin commented after the constitutional convention, that the drafters had given us 'a republic, if we can keep it.'"