I’m glad Caroline is pushing back on the ill-conceived narrative that Iran did not pose an “imminent threat” to the United States.

In a time when the legal restraints on presidential warmaking are fading into irrelevance, with Congress having made itself increasingly irrelevant, it’s amusing to watch (a) the Democrats and their media scribes try to boost “imminence” into a legal prerequisite for the constitutionally legitimate use of force, and (b) Trump officials stumble into this trap by unthinking assertions of an imminent Iranian threat — “unthinking” not because the Iranian threat failed some cosmic test of imminence (there are arguments on both sides) but because there is no legal precondition of imminence, so why invite debate on whether the president complied with such a condition?

As regular readers know, I am not a fan of presidential warmaking in the absence of congressional authorization, but, to repeat what I argued earlier in the week:

The doctrine is that the president may use force if there is a true threat to vital American interests. It is often but not always true that such threats will be imminent. After all, part of what makes something concrete rather than an abstraction is the likelihood that it will happen. Usually, that means there are signs that it will happen soon. Nevertheless, it doesn’t have to be that way. The issue is whether we face a dangerous vulnerability, not when harm could happen absent presidential action.

The doctrine is that the president may use force if there is a true threat to vital American interests. It is often but not always true that such threats will be imminent. After all, part of what makes something concrete rather than an abstraction is the likelihood that it will happen. Usually, that means there are signs that it will happen soon. Nevertheless, it doesn’t have to be that way. The issue is whether we face a dangerous vulnerability, not when harm could happen absent presidential action.

The rest of the post is here.

© National Review