Despite years of calls from the Pentagon for a new round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), Congress has refused to authorize one since 2005. With the Department of Defense running at 22 percent excess capacity and constant calls for more money for operations and modernization, Congress should allow the Pentagon to reallocate funds away from unnecessary bases into more urgent projects. But fears of communities losing their bases and watching their local economies suffer as a result has kept talk of a new BRAC off the table.

BRAC opponents should take a look at some of the data measuring the economic health of post-BRAC communities. Research shows that while there may be some short-term pain, in the long run most communities rebound — and oftentimes end up in a much stronger position before. A presentation last year at the Association of Defense Communities’ Base Redevelopment Forum looked at three very different cases: Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (1988); Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, Texas (1991); and the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard (1991). With both large and small communities represented, the evidence reveals BRAC’s actual effects.

We looked at four measures of economic and community health: housing prices, municipal bond rating, tax revenue per capita, and population growth. As the following charts show, these measures did not change in the same ways for each case, reflecting more regional trends than national.

For housing prices, we used data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) on single family home prices and looked at an index of median single-family home prices for each community compared to the national index. These indices from the FHFA used sales and appraisals of single-family homes and are not seasonally adjusted. The chart reflects the change over time to median home prices. We have set both the local and national indexes to begin at the same date and an index value of 100. Values over 100 represent an increase in value, values under 100 represent a decrease.

As can be seen in the charts, in all three cases housing prices were at or above their values within 10 years of base closure. In the case of Philadelphia, housing prices remained relatively steady, following the national trend, while Austin’s post-closure housing prices actually grew at a faster rate than the national trends. Only Portsmouth, New Hampshire, saw a significant drop in home prices following the closure of Pease AFB, but within a decade its housing market has rebounded, and price changes today are on par with national trends.

As a measure of a community’s economic health, municipal bond rating is about as literal as it gets. Using information from Michael Touchton and Amanda J. Ashley’s research, we looked at what these communities had as their bond ratings before closure, and several years after closure.

In each case, bond ratings increased, sometimes substantially. In the cases of Portsmouth and Philadelphia, both went from Ba (below investment grade) to Aaa, the highest grade possible.

Another key marker is total tax revenue, but that must be controlled for population growth. We looked at tax revenue per capita and found in each of the three cases this key metric has increased over time. Only Austin experienced a brief decline, and it quickly recovered.

And finally, we decided to look at population growth. One of the biggest fears with base closure is that associated job losses will cause people to move away in search of better prospects elsewhere.

Here, the picture is more mixed. Both Portsmouth and Philadelphia experienced population loss, with Portsmouth seeing a 21.5 percent decline between 1990 and 2000. As the smallest of the communities studied (population 26,160), the loss of the base would prove more significant than for Austin or Philly. At closure, Pease had employed over 4,500 people, both active duty military and civilians. The Air Force had also estimated that Pease created 2,466 secondary jobs in the surrounding communities. As for Philadelphia, the city had been experiencing population losses for at least a decade prior to the closure of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, but it has begun to recover somewhat, so its hard to say whether the base closure had an effect or not. By comparison, Austin has seen considerable population growth, likely due to a number of factors completely unrelated to the closure of Bergstrom AFB.

These three cases, and these measures of economic health, are merely snapshots into how base closure can affect a community, but they provide an important perspective. Taken together, they reveal how post-BRAC communities recover following a base closure. These facts should be taken into consideration in any future discussion over whether or not to authorize another BRAC round.

The MQ‑9 Reaper attack that took out Iranian General Qassim Suleimani was a drone strike for peace, President Trump explained last week: we took action “to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.” That’s a theory, and it’s going to be put to the test. “All is well!” the president tweeted last night as a salvo of Iranian missiles fell on U.S. positions in Iraq: “So far, so good!”

Trump’s decision to target Suleimani—a figure described as the Iranian equivalent of “an American Vice President, chairman of the Joint Chiefs and CIA director rolled into one”—wasn’t the first time the U.S. government has aimed lethal force at a top government official. There’s the checkered—and occasionally absurd—history of the CIA’s Cold War assassination attempts, including the Kennedys’ efforts to kill Fidel Castro. But we’ve also gone after legitimate targets in congressionally authorized wars: the downing of Admiral Yamamoto’s plane in WWII and the attempted decapitation strike against Saddam Hussein at the start of the Iraq War.

The Suleimani killing was something new under the sun. It marked the first time an American president has publicly ordered the assassination of a top government official for a country we’re not legally at war with.

This is where you’re supposed to acknowledge that the Quds Force commandant was an evil guy who got what he deserved. Done. But that’s got nothing to do with whether the move was wise or constitutionally permissible.

U.S. forces took out Suleimani “at the direction of the President,” per the Pentagon’s announcement. On what authority, exactly? For now, the official rationale is classified. In terms of public justification, all we have is some hand-waving by Trump’s national security adviser about the president’s “constitutional authorities as commander in chief to defend our nation” and the 17-year old Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq (2002 AUMF). Neither comes close to vesting the president with the power to set off a whole new war.

The 2002 AUMF authorizes the president to use military force in order to “defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq” and enforce various UN resolutions “regarding Iraq.” Unless “45” is going to break out the presidential sharpie and change the “q”s to “n”s, that’s not going to cut it. Neither will the 2001 AUMF, as I’ve explained at length elsewhere (See: “Repeal Old AUMFs and Salt the Earth”).

If and when the administration deigns to reveal its legal theory, the argument will probably be: (1) the AUMFs license our continuing presence in Iraq; and (2) the president has inherent power under Article II to defend our personnel from the sort of attacks Iranian proxies have carried out in recent weeks. (National Review’s David French outlines that theory here.)

How far up the escalation ladder are these powers supposed to extend, however? “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sits atop the military chain of command and apparently had to approve the recent militia attacks. Does Article II empower Trump to order a hit on the Ayatollah? That we wouldn’t miss that guy either seems rather beside the point.

It’s true that Article II leaves the president with some defensive war powers, allowing him to “repel sudden attacks,” as Madison’s notes from the Convention put it. But as we move up the ladder, at some point we’ve left the realm of self-defense and the response becomes in effect, a declaration of war. The Constitution vests that power in Congress.

War powers practice in the early republic suggests that the president’s power of “self-defense” was far narrower than Trump’s defenders imagine. During our first four presidential administrations, the U.S. was on the receiving end of multiple acts of war, including “invasions of territory (Creek [Indians]), illegal capture of neutral shipping not carrying enemy contraband (England and France), and the kidnapping of thousands of foreign sailors (England).” Yet, as the University of Virginia’s Sai Prakash explains, “even though [those] nations had declared war on the United States in formal and informal ways, Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison believed that the President could not wage war in response.” Without formal authorization from Congress, early presidents recognized that “they were limited to those steps falling short of a declaration of war, such as defensive measures.” As Washington put it in 1793,

“The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure.”

In his June 1, 1812 message to Congress, President James Madison outlined a long train of abuses committed by the British: they’d “wantonly spilt American blood within the sanctuary of our territorial jurisdiction” and ripped “thousands of American citizens… from their country and from everything dear to them,” forcing them into the service of the empire. “We behold, in fine, on the side of Great Britain, a state of war against the United States, and on the side of the United States a state of peace toward Great Britain,” Madison declared. But whether the United States could answer those abuses with war “is a solemn question which the Constitution wisely confides to the legislative department of the government.”

Even James K. Polk understood that just drawing enemy fire wasn’t enough to get a war started. You could, as Polk did, gin up a pretext for one by sending U.S. troops into disputed territory and getting some of them killed, but to “take the fight to the enemy,” you needed authorization from Congress.

All this is likely “academic.” The White House likely doesn’t consider itself bound by its own Office of Legal Counsel opinions, much less the original meaning of the Constitution’s war powers provisions.

But what recent events have made plain, as Jack Goldsmith sums up, is that

“Our country has, quite self-consciously, given one person, the President, an enormous sprawling military and enormous discretion to use it in ways that can easily lead to a massive war. That is our system: one person decides.”

I’d quibble with “self-consciously,” otherwise, as a descriptive matter, that’s right: that’s the system we’ve got. And it’s the inverse of the one the Framers designed: “This system will not hurry us into war,” James Wilson told delegates to the Pennsylvania ratifying convention in 1787, “it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man… to involve us in such distress, for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large.”

As of this morning, things looked brighter than they did for several harrowing hours last night. Iran’s response didn’t result in any American deaths, perhaps by design: “We do not seek escalation or war,” tweeted Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Trump may be inclined to deescalate as well. Cooler heads may yet prevail.

It is, however, insane and intolerable that peace depends on the restraint of the Islamic Republic and an American president given to rage-tweeting war-crime threats. No one fallible human being should be entrusted with the war powers now vested in the presidency. Now, more than ever, Congress needs to do everything in its power to reclaim its authority over war and peace.

Earlier today, Cato issued a press release based on the current results of a major and ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) project designed to try to determine the magnitude of FBI domestic surveillance activities that may be unconstitutional or otherwise questionable from a civil liberties standpoint. First, some background.

Since April 2019, I’ve filed over 400 FOIAs. One of the core questions my FOIA work seeks to answer is whether, and to what extent, the kinds of domestic surveillance abuses that were surfaced by the Church Committee (and later the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) have resumed—particularly the targeting of domestic groups on the basis of their constitutionally protected right to free speech and association. Based on the evidence I and others in the media and civil liberties community have accumulated to date, I believe the answer is yes.

To refresh your memory, I wrote this piece for JustSecurity on Constitution Day 2019 regarding some very disturbing findings I and others had made regarding FBI targeting of domestic advocacy groups, including groups involved in immigration work.

On November 26, I reviewed all of the FOIA responses I’ve received to date to ensure any additional actions that might be necessary on my part and not previously addressed were cataloged and scheduled. In the course of that review, I realized that one Department of Justice Office of Information Policy (DoJ/​OIP) response I received in June 2019 regarding Cato contained “Glomar” exemption language. The third paragraph of the DoJ letter contains the key language and reads as follows:

“I have determined that the FBI properly refused to confirm or deny the existence of any national security or foreign intelligence records responsive to your request because the existence or nonexistence of any such responsive records is currently and properly classified. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(1). Please be advised that the Department Review Committee will determine whether the existence or nonexistence of this category of records should continue to be considered a classified fact. Additionally, the existence or nonexistence of any such responsive records is protected under the FOIA pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(3). This provision concerns matters specifically exempted from release by a statute other than the FOIA (in this instance, 50 U.S.C. § 3024(i)(1), which pertains to the National Security Act of 1947 and the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949).”

So what exactly is a “Glomar” FOIA response and what does it mean? A little background follows.

FOIA exemptions and the Glomar Explorer case

Statutorily (at 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)), there are nine specific categories of exemptions under FOIA:

• Exemption 1: Information that is classified to protect national security.
• Exemption 2: Information related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency.
• Exemption 3: Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another federal law.
• Exemption 4: Trade secrets or commercial or financial information that is confidential or privileged.
• Exemption 5: Privileged communications within or between agencies, including those protected by the:
  1. Deliberative Process Privilege (provided the records were created less than 25 years before the date on which they were requested)
  2. Attorney-Work Product Privilege
  3. Attorney-Client Privilege
• Exemption 6: Information that, if disclosed, would invade another individual’s personal privacy.
• Exemption 7: Information compiled for law enforcement purposes that:
  • 7(A). Could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings
  • 7(B). Would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication
  • 7(C). Could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy
  • 7(D). Could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source
  • 7(E). Would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law
  • 7(F). Could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual
• Exemption 8: Information that concerns the supervision of financial institutions.
• Exemption 9: Geological information on wells.

However, one particular court case involving a FOIA on a deep-sea salvage vessel named the Glomar Explorer, allegedly hired by the CIA to retrieve a sunken Soviet sub, led to a now infamous court case (Phillippi v. CIA, 546 F.2d 1009, 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1976) in which the court sided with the CIA in its contention that simply confirming or denying the Agency’s connection with the Glomar Explorer was classified. The Agency argued that an answer either way would harm national security (and thus fell under the FOIA b(1) national security exemption, listed above). Hence the terms “Glomar exemption” or “Glomar response” in the FOIA context.

With respect to FOIA b(1) exemption Glomar invocations, federal courts have often sided with the Executive branch in the decades since the Phillippi decision (see for example Gardels v. CIA, 689 F.2d 1100, 1103 (D.C. Cir. 1982) and Wilner v. National Security Agency, 592 F.3d 60, 68 (2d Cir. 2009)). It was not until 2010 that the CIA formally acknowledged its role in the Glomar Explorer episode, thus successfully using the court-created “Glomar” exemption to withhold relevant records for decades on that particular intelligence operation.

I note, however, that in most of these court cases, the issue generally involved a foreign intelligence or foreign policy activity. Federal courts have been more willing to deny agency or department Glomar invocations in a law enforcement context (the FOIA b(7) series of exemptions), as was the case earlier this year when the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press won its case against the FBI over its invocation of Glomar to try to conceal its tactic of impersonating news crews as part of investigations. What has not been tested in court thus far (so far as I am aware) is whether the FBI or any other federal agency can employ a Glomar b(1) or b(3) FOIA response in connection with a domestic group or a media organization that may have been targeted for some level of data accumulation or surveillance.

Significance of the Glomar responses I’ve received to date

What makes the Glomar responses I’ve received thus far extremely concerning and noteworthy is 1) the sheer number and 2) the invocation of Glomar b(1)(i.e., national security/​intelligence) and b(3) vice Glomar b(7)(i.e., law enforcement).

As you can see from the Cato press release, the organizations run the gamut–some are clearly on the left side of the political spectrum, others from the conservative side, and of course the libertarian slice of the spectrum as well. The fact that I received Glomar responses on several media organizations or media trade/​membership organizations, as well as a number of immigration-related groups—many involved in direct client services delivery—is alarming. Cato is, at this time, only publishing the names of organizations that have agreed to be so identified. The notification, coordination, and follow up process with other organizations is ongoing.

Does DoJ’s invocation of national security-related Glomars provide conclusive evidence that these organizations have been targeted for surveillance or informant/​penetration operations?

Some might argue that this apparent surge in Glomar responses simply represents a new FBI tactic to thwart FOIA requests. If that were the case, I would expect to be getting Glomar boiler plate response language in every FOIA response I receive on domestic organizations, which has not been the case. However, to more thoroughly explore that possibility, I’ve submitted over 100 additional FOIAs on a number of other organizations that I’ve designated a “control group” to help confirm or deny whether the Glomars I’ve received are likely concealing nefarious activity or are the initial wave of a change in DoJ policy to “Glomar everything” to make FOIA nearly useless.

As I noted over the weekend, prior cases of Glomar being confirmed as having hidden real activity speak to the reason why getting to the bottom of this issue is so important:

More recently, CIA attempts to “Glomar” the ACLU over the existence of the agency’s “Drone War” in Iraq and Afghanistan failed. And just last year, the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press won its Glomar FOIA case against the FBI, which had argued that it properly invoked Glomar to avoid confirming or denying whether its agents sometimes impersonate journalists. In each of these national security or law enforcement cases, the “Glomar” invocation in question was used to cover a real activity undertaken by the agency or department in question.

My own view is that the the Glomar responses received to date may indicate that the FBI has been accumulating information on the organizations in question, possibly utilizing social media surveillance, commercial and government database searches, and physical surveillance measures (either by FBI personnel or informants recruited for the purpose) for what the FBI terms “assessments”—a form of preliminary but often expansive information gathering operation that may, or may not, lead to a preliminary or full field investigation, and thus more aggressive surveillance and related activities down the road.

I strongly suspect that if such “assessments” are underway, they very likely violate the 1^st and 4^th Amendment rights of the targets. That is certainly the case with regards to Anti​war​.com, which has been in litigation for years regarding confirmed FBI monitoring/​surveillance of their website and activities.

If any of the organizations for which I’ve received Glomar responses were current or potential targets of a criminal investigation, I likely would have received a FOIA response containing the following language, which is drawn from the FBI FOIA response I got on an encrypted messaging app provider (which I will not identify at this time, as the FOIA appeal process is ongoing):

“The FBI has completed its search for records responsive to your request. The material you requested is located in an investigative file which is exempt from disclosure pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(A). 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(A) exempts from disclosure:

records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such law enforcement records or information … could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings…

“The records responsive to your request are law enforcement records; there is a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding relevant to these responsive records, and release of the information could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings. Therefore, your request is being administratively closed.”

To date, I have received no such FOIA response on any domestic advocacy group or media organization, though many of my FOIAs are in various stages of initial response or appeal. Accordingly, this assessment is subject to change.

One final note. One FOIA response I received on a domestic advocacy organization was not a Glomar and did, in fact, reveal FBI monitoring of the organization and/​or individuals associated with it. In that case, the surveillance took place during the Bush 43 administration. However, that response was heavily redacted and clearly only a partial response to my request. That particular FOIA remains on appeal with the Department of Justice and will likely be the subject of litigation in the near future.

The reported detention and interrogation of Iranian Americans in Washington state over the weekend raises an obvious question: was this an isolated incident, or is the Trump administration now rolling out an interrogation and possible detention program targeting persons of Iranian heritage? A FOIA response from the Justice Department I received in May 2019 may offer a telling clue. First, a little background.

In April 2019, not long after President Trump designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization, I decided it would be a good idea to find out if the administration was engaged in any other war planning with Iran that would have a domestic nexus. Specifically, I wanted to know if the administration had plans on the shelf to detain persons of Arab or Iranian heritage in the event of yet another war with a country in the region.

Accordingly, I submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the Department of Justice (multiple components, including the FBI), United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the United States Postal Service (USPS), and the Census Bureau. I picked these agencies or departments because each has, in past wars, played key roles in either the surveillance of ethnic populations deemed a threat or actually incarcerating persons of a particular ancestry who happened to be from a country at which we were at war.

As the FOIA responses rolled in over the next few months, I got the typical “Your request is too broad” or similar dodges from DHS, the Postal Service, and the IRS. NORTHCOM didn’t even bother to respond, and neither did the FBI. But the Department of Justice, via its Office of Information Policy, did respond.

With regard to the second part of my FOIA request for any records regarding “implementation of detention programs for persons of Arab or Persian/​Iranian heritage in the event of the declaration of a national emergency, declaration of war, or authorization for the use of military force against certain entities,’ DoJ said this:

With regard to part 2 of your request, I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of such records. The existence or non-existence of such records would be protected pursuant to Exemption 7(E) of the FOIA, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(E), which concerns records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, the release of which would disclose techniques or procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions.

That infamous “neither confirm nor deny” language is what’s known in the FOIA world as a “Glomar” response—a more than 40 year old judicially created carveout from FOIA that makes it possible for an agency or department to dodge a FOIA request on a particular topic, absent a review by a judge. It was not until 2010 that the CIA admitted the original Glomar case had been used to hide its partially successful efforts to raise a sunken Soviet sub from the Pacific Ocean via billionaire Howard Hughes’ deep sea mining vessel Glomar Explorer.

More recently, CIA attempts to “Glomar” the ACLU over the existence of the agency’s “Drone War” in Iraq and Afghanistan failed. And just last year, the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press won its Glomar FOIA case against the FBI, which had argued that it properly invoked Glomar to avoid confirming or denying whether its agents sometimes impersonate journalists. In each of these national security or law enforcement cases, the “Glomar” invocation in question was used to cover a real activity undertaken by the agency or department in question.

So does DoJ have a plan on the shelf to detain persons of Iranian heritage in the event of a conflict with Iran? If so, is that plan part of a larger “whole of government” effort also involving, among other elements, DHS’s Customs and Border Protection? CBP denied it in a late Sunday afternoon tweet. However, the specific accounts of Iranian Americans allegedly detained by CBP personnel at the Peace Arch Border Crossing as relayed to CAIR, as well as the history of such detentions and interrogations in this country, make the scenario frighteningly plausible. It’s one reason I have two active detention-related FOIA lawsuits—one against NORTHCOM, the other against the Postal Service—grinding away in the D.C. Circuit, with more likely on the way.

The U.S. airstrike that killed the Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani is a dangerous and reckless act that is almost certain to trigger an escalation of violence in the Middle East, including the possibility of retaliatory Iranian actions against U.S. forces in the region.

There is also likely to be backlash from Baghdad. The bombing killed Soleimani as well as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an important Shia paramilitary leader in Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units with close ties to Iran. (Note: Iran’s increased influence in Iraq is a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion in 2003 and the subsequent decisions of the Bush administration.) U.S. forces are in Iraq with the permission of the Iraqi government, which has grown increasingly infuriated by repeated U.S. airstrikes on Iraqi territory that lacked the approval of the sovereign government there. Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi has already condemned the attack as a violation of the terms of the agreement authorizing U.S. forces in Iraq. This could make U.S. troops and personnel, as well as innocent civilians caught in the cross-fire, even more vulnerable in the potential fallout.

Trump came into office with an Iran that was effectively denuclearized, plus a newly opened U.S.-Iran diplomatic channel to continue to improve relations following the JCPOA. Thanks to the president’s warrantless withdrawal from that deal and the administration’s incoherent maximum pressure “strategy,” that diplomatic channel is no more, and Iran has resumed its nuclear activities and ratcheted up its violence in the region.

This dangerous game of tit-for-tat escalation was entirely predictable, and indeed predicted. The approach was senseless from the beginning and it has had the exact opposite of its intended effect.

While we can expect Iran to pursue retaliatory actions of some kind, the leadership in Tehran knows they are outmatched by the United States, so they are likely to employ tactics they expect will be below the threshold of what would prompt a major U.S. military response inside Iranian territory. Still, this could trigger a sharp uptick in violence across the Middle East, to the detriment of regional stability, U.S. interests, and global peace and security.

Although President Trump boldly stated in his last State of the Union address that “great nations do not fight endless wars,” with this act he has likely further drawn the United States into the morass of Middle East conflict. The United States has been attacking the Middle East every year for 29 years. As president, Trump has broadened ongoing bombing campaigns across multiple countries and, in his first two years, increased the U.S. troop presence in the region by more than 30 percent. He has ordered an additional nearly 15,000 deployed since summer 2019.

For decades, this approach has failed. Its continuation is fueled by unthinking policy inertia, an erroneous belief that U.S. partners in the region are vital for U.S. interests, and an irrational fear of Iran. As I put it last May, “most of the political establishment in Washington perceive[s] the threat from Iran to be serious when in fact it hardly exists at all.”

Americans must begin to appreciate how peculiar it is for a country like ours to be so maniacally obsessed with, and terrified by, a country like Iran. The United States is a global military juggernaut whose core national-security concerns are rendered rather trivial due to its outsize capabilities and its uniquely protective geography, reinforced even further by a reliable nuclear deterrent. Iran is a third-rate military power in a tough neighborhood half a world away. It poses no direct threat to us. Iran’s main regional rivals possess conventional and nuclear capabilities that can deter Iran quite sufficiently. Washington’s phobia of the supposed threat of an Iranian attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 30 percent of the world’s crude oil flows, is mostly overheated babble. A sincere attempt would be damaging to Iran’s own economic self-interest, not to mention its security, as retaliation would surely be swift. Additionally, Iran’s much ballyhooed support for non-state actors, mostly Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen, does not present a real threat to America. Those groups have local concerns. Hezbollah and Hamas are almost exclusively focused on Israel, and the Houthis in Yemen are a nationalist movement. These are not transnational terrorist groups spending time trying to hatch 9/11 style plots against America.

How is it that the United States of America can get whipped up into such a hysteria over such a weak, distant, and hemmed in Iran? Much of Washington seems unable to properly assess risk. Threat perceptions on Iran are fueled by an outdated enemy image where Iran plays the role of the villain, but presents no objective direct threat to this country.

At this point, neither side appears willing to back out of this destructive round of escalation. That bodes ill for all parties. If the White House isn’t prepared to find a way to reduce tensions and develop a strategy that will reliably avoid war and serve U.S. interests, Congress must (but probably won’t) step up to assert its prerogatives over the executive branch’s war powers.

President Trump’s decision to order the killing of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani threatens to draw the United States even more deeply into a region that has already claimed too much American blood and treasure.

The international reaction was swift. Futures on global stock markets fell, and oil prices spiked, in anticipation of a wider conflict. In Iraq, where popular sentiment had once been building against Iranian influence in the country, that anger is now sure to be directed at the American presence, and thus constitutes a grave danger to Americans serving there and throughout the region. Writing before the Suleimani strike, Paul Pillar noted that American actions “have converted what had been a story of popular protests with an anti-Iran tinge into a story of strongly anti‑U.S. protests.” Now, as Jack Goldsmith observed (via the WSJ), “Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi condemned the targeted killing as a violation of the terms underpinning the U.S. troop presence in the country.” So, the Iraqi government’s next move might be as important as Tehran’s.

But perhaps the most important reaction was among members of Congress who were incensed that the Trump administration would take actions that could result in a war with Iran without congressional authorization. Rep. Ro Khanna (D‑CA) took to Twitter last night to chastise those in the House and Senate who had voted for the National Defense Authorization Act that did not include language that would have blocked such an attack. Notably, that amendment had passed overwhelmingly in the House NDAA, and with bipartisan support. All eyes should be on Rep. Matt Gaetz (R‑FL), who cosponsored the amendment, and the other Republicans who voted for it, to see if they remain committed to the principle that Congress, not the President, has the authority to take the country to war.

Meanwhile, President Trump, who has hinted at his desire to end endless wars (even as he has presided over a dramatic expansion of nearly all of the conflicts that he inherited), now seems poised to add an enormous new one into the mix. Because, let’s be clear, while the United States and Iran have been locked in a cycle of confrontation for four decades, neither side has been prepared to engage in full-scale and direct conflict with the other. And yet that is a step that may very well follow from these actions — if cooler heads don’t quickly prevail. As ruinous as the war with Iraq has been — for the United States, for Iraqis, and for the people throughout the region — war with Iran would be far, far worse.

The title of our book, Fuel to the Fire, is tragically apt. President Trump inherited a broken foreign policy, and he has made it worse. John Glaser, Trevor Thrall, and I also point out the dangers associated with investing so much power in the hands of a man utterly unfit for the office of the presidency. America’s Founders anticipated this, too. But the system that they created has now been so thoroughly upended, that it will take concerted action across multiple fronts to stop this train that is hurtling down the tracks. And I worry that it might already be too late.

Last week the Washington Post ran a series on “The Afghanistan Papers” based on newly-released documents that detail military decision-making during the lengthy, and apparently endless, war in Afghanistan. Stressed is the disconnect found between the dismal realities on the ground that were well known to military leaders and their unrealistic public optimism about progress in the war.

The documents and the analysis by Craig Whitlock in the Post add a great deal to the discussion, but both the dismal realities and the disconnect were already pretty well known as John Glaser and I argued earlier this year in a Cato Policy Analysis paper and in an article. The problem, as Jason Lyell has noted, is not that the information was unavailable, but that few people were paying much attention. Perhaps the series will help to change that.

Unwarranted public optimism by the officials during wars is hardly new. As Micah Zenko has noted, “US civilian and military leaders have misled the public for every war I have studied (Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, ‘non-battlefield’ drone wars).” That generalization can obviously be extended to Vietnam and, quite possibly, to just about every war ever fought.

One reason for the bogus optimism, as a senior Pentagon official told John Glaser off the record earlier this year, is that it is necessary to preserve troop morale. That is, as we send troops off to carry out policies that we know to be failed ones, we want them to be upbeat and enthusiastic in the process.

Other reasons are suggested in War and Politics, a brilliant 1973 book by defense analyst Bernard Brodie. In investigating the phenomenon during World War I, he stresses that it is impelled in part by a “fierce dedication to the goal of victory,” and, even more so, by a “fear of losing.”

Experience suggests that this concern may often be overwrought at least in cases like Afghanistan. The United States, after all, took defeat in Vietnam in stride. In 1975, a few months after the debacle there in which Communist forces defeated the American-trained South Vietnamese army in 55 days, I was able to talk with General William Westmoreland, who had been the commander there for years and was now on a book tour. I asked him how he felt about the collapse. He simply shrugged and said, “Well, what do you expect?” The American public responded similarly: despite fears that defeat in Vietnam would lead to the rise of a new McCarthyism, the war scarcely even came up in the presidential campaign a year later.

Brodie suggests that another reason derives from the fact that war is a highly uncertain undertaking: as Dwight Eisenhower put it succinctly, “every war is going to astonish you.” Thus, even though things may be going badly, there is always the hope that the enemy will suddenly blunder in an arena in which, as Brodie puts it, “mischance and miscalculation reign.”

And, most tellingly, Brodie notes that “the military commanders who in adversity can feel and exude optimism are the ones who inspire confidence.” That is, they not only lie to others, but to themselves, and, in the process, generate support and acclaim. By contrast, “the attempt to express reason is, under a wide variety of wartime circumstances, to risk the label of ‘defeatist,’ the penalties for which are always unpleasant and sometimes extreme.”

This condition is reflected in some of testimony relayed in the Post series. Notes a retired colonel who was a counterinsurgency adviser in Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014, “truth was rarely welcome” and “bad news was often stifled.” And when he attempted to air “concerns about the willingness, capacity or corruption of the Afghan government, it was clear it wasn’t welcome.”

Something of that phenomenon can also be seen in a 2010 military analysis noted in our paper in which briefers glumly observed that no counterinsurgency on record had succeeded when the insurgents had access to a deep cross-border sanctuary. On the brighter side, however, they felt compelled to add that one could “hope” the situation in Afghanistan would prove to be an exception.

Finally, the unjustified persistence of official optimism may owe something to the fact that the United States entered the war in Afghanistan in something of a rage after 9/11. Poll data show that about 75 percent supported the wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq when American troops were initially sent it. For the war in Afghanistan, it was more like 90 percent.

World War I was also highly supported at the outset. And thus Brodie’s eloquent observation about that war may apply as well to the one in Afghanistan: “The urge to prevail, fed initially by what seemed an unlimited supply of frenzied national rage, managed afterwards with tragic impressiveness to survive a long time on a diet of despair.”