(Dobbs) “I’m just sorry that Congress isn’t alive to see this.”

Trump blows by the appointed constitutional role of Congress.

Whether the United States should have knocked out Iran’s main nuclear installations is a matter for debate. Whether the president should have done it without the consent of Congress is not. He was wrong.

Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution is titled “Powers of Congress,” and its 11th clause is specific: “The Congress shall have Power…. to declare War.” Article II, which lays out of the powers of the president, has no wording to that effect. It states, “The President shall be Commander in Chief,” but the Constitution gives him no more power without a state of war than that. It still requires Congress to declare war before the president can send his troops into battle.

Donald Trump stepped all over that.

Moreover, in 1973, in the wake of the ruinous war in Vietnam, Congress added a new law to the books, the “War Powers Act.” It says that the president can only send American troops into battle if there’s a declaration of war by Congress. In short, it reaffirms the clear wording of the Constitution.

Trump stepped over that one too.

Of course with this president, it’s all rather moot. He has blown by his constitutional constraints since Day One back in the Oval Office. And this congress, dominated by the disciples of MAGA, has uttered barely an inaudible bleep of protest to reclaim their constitutional prerogatives. Their oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” is a phony promise by spineless sycophants.

That’s why, while there’s absolutely nothing funny about this conflict in the Middle East, I couldn’t help but chuckle yesterday when a friend showed me a meme. What it said was, “I’m just sorry that Congress isn’t alive to see this.”

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net