The Democrats’ Instant ‘No’
A savvier party would have waited before lashing out against the attack on Iran.
By Barton Swaim
March 4, 2026 5:12 pm ET
On Saturday, Donald Trump became a wartime president. The conflict in Iran will likely dominate his attention from now until he leaves office in 2029. Some of his extracurricular fixations - personal vendettas, online foolery - could get less attention. Whatever the war’s outcome, by authorizing a direct attack on a dangerous regime, Mr. Trump has given his remaining time in office to a president’s highest duty—protecting America’s homeland, military bases and allies from menace.
Liberal commentators and Democrats on the Hill responded to this momentous turn of events in precisely the way they would have responded if Mr. Trump had done the opposite: with imputations of incompetence and foul motives. If the president hadn’t called a massive fighting force to the Persian Gulf and launched an attack, his despisers would have accused him of wasting resources on - fill in the blank - and ignoring the real threat in Tehran.
Democrats, with a few brave exceptions, accuse the administration of proffering a variety of “rationales” for the war, with the implication that it acted in pursuit of some hidden goal. They ignore the possibility that
an administration might have more than a single reason for assaulting an enemy.
The Iranian regime’s enduring malignity, together with its people’s demonstrated desire to be free of it, makes the administration’s explanatory duties easier. Anyway, as our experience in Iraq reminds us, it’s possible to overexplain and overplan.
What’s more interesting is the Democrats’ instantaneous and intense hostility to the operation.
Their stated reasons are basically three. First, it’s
“illegal” and
“unconstitutional.” Second, the
threat from Iran wasn’t “imminent.” Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, writing for the Journal on Sunday, combined these two: “As a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees... I can state plainly that there was no imminent threat from Iran to America sufficient to warrant committing our sons and daughters to another war in the Middle East—especially without the congressional debate and vote that the Constitution requires.”
Hooey. If the Constitution requires congressional approval, there’s no “especially” about it. The senator has seen
the long list of war-making decisions taken by presidents of both parties in the absence of congressional votes. As for his denial that the threat was “imminent,” I wonder what the word could mean: Iran has attempted to assassinate assorted American dignitaries, including the president. It funds terror groups across the Middle East and slaughtered 30,000 demonstrators a few weeks ago. Its rulers express Nazi-like ambitions of annihilating its enemies, even as they don’t bother to hide a mad hunger for long-range missiles and nuclear technology.
For Mr. Kaine, I guess, imminence would mean the ayatollah’s finger poised above a red button labeled LAUNCH.
The third stated reason for opposition, this one invented on the fly, has to do with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s supposed admission that Israel dragged the U.S. into war. In context, Mr. Rubio was explaining why the launch happened on Saturday, Feb. 28, instead of some other day, not why it happened at all. But parts of
the Democratic base will thrill to the claim that Israel made us do it.
Those are the stated reasons for Democratic hostility. The
unstated reasons?
The Democrats’ reaction to the attack on Iran arises partly from the
pusillanimous urge to avoid all friction with the progressive left. That’s the same urge that led the Biden administration to modify its Mideast policy in deference to the Muslim vote in Michigan, which Kamala Harris lost anyway.
Then there is the
experience of Iraq. In 2002, 81 House Democrats and 29 Senate Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, voted to authorize force in Iraq; six years later, Barack Obama defeated Mrs. Clinton and won the presidency on the strength of having opposed the war.
Democrats have internalized that lesson.
The differences with the Iraq war are several. The obvious one is the absence of a ground invasion in Iran, but others deserve a mention. Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons in the past, and his need to represent himself as a Middle East bad boy prevented him from proving he didn’t have the weapons anymore. In 2026, the Khamenei regime hasn’t managed to get a deliverable nuclear device, but for years it has advertised its aim to get and use one.
Which takes us back to
Mr. Obama. He premised his foreign-policy outlook on the proposition that the George W. Bush administration had everything exactly wrong. This led him to hold Gulf allies and Israel at arm’s length and to embrace Iran. In
one of history’s great displays of educated gullibility, legions of foreign-policy experts accepted the belief that Iran’s rulers would learn the benefits of civilian-use nuclear power and join the community of nations.
That delusion more than any other prevented U.S. policymakers for more than a decade from acknowledging Iran’s constant, active malevolence.
A savvier opposition than today’s Democrats would have practiced some circumspection in the early days of Epic Fury. Now they’ll benefit only if America fails.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-demo...nt-no-23876a3e
