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Good evening. It's Friday, January 12.
Tonight: the escalation in the Middle East that has been feared since the start of the U.S.-funded Israeli war in Gaza is now officially here. On Thursday, the Biden administration, in partnership with the UK, bombed 16 different sites in the country of Yemen. The rationale for this bombing is that the Houthis, the Iran-backed militia that rules much of Yemen, have been attacking Israeli and American commercial ships in the Red Sea in retaliation for the U.S.-aided destruction of Gaza by Israel.
No matter your views on the justness and wisdom of this bombing campaign by Biden, two points are indisputably true: 1) the Middle East war, in which Biden has involved the U.S. in defense of Israel, has now escalated to include the use of U.S. combat forces, American troops, for now, at least in Yemen, and 2) Biden's bombing campaign, despite being telegraphed and planned weeks before, if not longer, was carried out without any congressional debate, let alone congressional approval.
Numerous members of Congress in both political parties have objected to this new escalation because it is illegal and unconstitutional. After all, the American president does not have the constitutional authority to order the use of military force without congressional approval. We can't just start new wars without Congress, except in the case of an emergency that is clearly not applicable here.
This is a topic I have been reporting on and writing about for almost two decades. Indeed, the expansive theories of executive power under which all of this is done, basically argue that the president is free to do anything and everything he wants, as long as he can say that doing so is necessary to protect national security, which is one of the most radical components of the Bush-Cheney administration’s post-9/11 power grab in the name of the War on Terror. Opposing those radical theories of executive power—and warning of their dangers—was one of the primary reasons I stopped practicing law and began writing about politics back in 2005.
As a result of having been involved in these various debates for so long, I know full well that one of the challenges is inducing people to care about this. Often, when it comes time for the U.S. military to start being deployed and start bombing and blowing up things and people, the excitement that comes from that—often the belief that it's warranted—renders debates over things like constitutionality and legality seem boring and legalistic, almost annoying.
But for reasons that I think it is vital to emphasize, these questions are anything but that. I'm sure you've heard before about how Dwight Eisenhower when leaving office in 1961, chose to devote a substantial portion of the 15 minutes that he was given for his televised farewell address to warn of the dangers of what he called “the military-industrial complex” meaning how the powers of the Pentagon and U.S. Security State had grown so large and unchecked that even this five star general regarded it as a grave threat to democratic norms.
Eisenhower was far from the first president to sound that alarm. Indeed, it was the founders of the American Republic in the Federalist Papers and the very first American president, George Washington, in his 1796 farewell address, who repeatedly and emphatically emphasized the dangers of allowing the presidency, the executive branch to assert powers in an unchecked manner, especially the power to wage war or to maintain a standing army under his control. Absolute executive power, in the form of the British Crown, was, after all, one of the primary grievances that motivated them to take up arms very dangerously against the world's most powerful empire and they were absolutely determined when forming a new republic not to repeat its worst and most repressive attributes.
For years now, we've heard a supposed consensus that everyone agrees in Washington that the United States government needs to stop endless wars, especially in the Middle East. It's time for us to no longer keep fighting in the Middle East. And yet, here we are again. Whether the U.S. has made the right decision in bombing Yemen—and that's risking even broader regional conflict in that region—is a crucial question on the substance but it is also crucial to understand why Biden's unilateral decision to once again bomb a foreign country with no congressional approval is on its own, independent of the merits. Deeply disturbing and quite dangerous.
Then: other than that lack of approval by Congress, Biden's bombing of Yemen provoked widespread applause on a bipartisan basis. Among those cheering this decision and justifying it was Ben Shapiro, who is always happy to see American troops deployed in that region to fight against Israel's enemies—as long as it's not him and his family doing the fighting. And that's do we see yet again that Biden's signature foreign policies in Yemen, Ukraine, Israel, with China, command enthusiastic support from the establishment wing of the Republican Party currently represented in the GOP presidential race by Nikki Haley. One reason the D.C. establishment is so eager for Haley to be the nominee is precisely that it would mean that there's no debate or disagreement of any kind with regard to the three new wars in which Biden has now involved the United States, in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, and now in Yemen.
And then after that: speaking of the GOP primary, we have spent the last week reading very alarming weather reports about the snowstorms and blizzards descending on Iowa, as that state is poised to become the first state on Monday to cast real ballots for the 2024 presidential nominee of both parties. Seeing that the state was being swarmed by a dangerous blizzard, we decided that would be a good idea to send Michael Tracey there to cover the election for us on the ground, so that's what we did. Michael will join us tonight from Des Moines to tell us about what he has been seeing, and hearing, how he's been barely surviving this blizzard, and including a story about how he was almost arrested for the crime of trying to ask Nikki Haley a question.
And then finally: the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL is an organization we frequently criticize on this show for a variety of reasons. And yet we think it's very important journalistically to take note sometimes when a group that you generally dislike or are denouncing does something noble and positive. It's important to report it and to give credit where it's due. The ADL has launched a campaign to correct one of the worst, most systemic and most notorious injustices in the United States, namely, the inability of American Jews to find any representation at all at any level in Hollywood, in the entertainment industry. Finally, the ADL is launching a campaign in conjunction with several prominent Jewish celebrities in Hollywood, as well as agents, producers and studio executives to, once and for all, create at least some minimal space for American Jews to play some role in Hollywood. And we'll tell you about that.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
