The Next Fight in the Iran War

It looks like the next fight in the Iran war will erupt on Capitol Hill, where the Democrats are vowing to block President Trump’s request for funding to keep our soldiers, sailors, and airmen in the fight. Yet “if the Pentagon is asking for $200 billion they are asking for a long war,” avers Senator Ruben Gallego. “The answer is a simple no.” What has become the Democrats’ cause is cutting off funds before the war is won. What a contrast to the commander in chief. “We’re in very good shape,” President Trump says of the request for funding, “but we want to be in the best shape, the best shape we’ve ever been in.” America’s “manufacturers of military equipment are building at a level they’ve never seen before,” he added. “It takes money to kill bad guys,” the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, avers. “As far as the $200 billion, I think that number could move.”The expense is nothing to sneeze at, but at any cost, victory over Iran would be, as the saying goes, priceless — not to mention indispensable. It’s hard to imagine what would be the cost of the devastation that could be wrought by a nuclear-armed regime at Tehran. Viewed through that lens, it’s difficult to argue with the logic of Mr. Trump’s appraisal that the spending amounts to “a small price to pay to make sure we stay tippy top.”The White House’s funding request has yet to be formally conveyed to the legislators. Congressional Democrats, though, are already grousing. “It’s difficult to swallow,” sniffs the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, Senator Jack Reed, “particularly when the American public is seeing accelerating prices in many different categories, not just gasoline.” He muses about “the wisdom of why they initiated this attack in the first place.”Peering over the president’s shoulder on matters of military necessity seems to us a less than useful role for the legislature. This stripe of meddling, though, is of a piece with the Democrats’ disposition since the Iran war got under way. America’s jets had hardly lifted off the runways on their missions against the mullahs before the liberals in Congress started trying to crimp the commander-in-chief’s capacity to wage the war as he deems fit.Senator Tim Kaine complained that “there was no imminent threat from Iran.” He led the charge for a war powers resolution in the Congress to curb Mr. Trump’s ability to lead the military against Iran. In short, these columns cautioned, the Democrats were “already beating the drums of defeat.” It was a troubling echo, we noted, of how an earlier generation of liberals cut off American war aid for South Vietnam, handing a victory to the communists.Mr. Kaine’s resolution failed to prosper on Capitol Hill. Now, with Mr. Trump seeking funds to wage the fight against Iran to a victorious conclusion, the Democrats want to try again. “What we’re focused on now is stopping this reckless war of choice,” the House minority leader, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, said today. He insinuates that with the war now in its third week, the measure might find more support among the solons.We get that Mr. Trump himself has criticized America’s outlays for Mideast conflicts and derided the Iraq war as a “big, fat mistake.” Yet the danger posed by Iran led the president to rethink his posture. In the event, the president’s evolution on this head is more credible than the idea of the Democrats emerging as fiscal hawks. When it comes to funding the troops, Congressman Mike Rogers has it right: “We have big challenges, so I like big numbers.”

The Next Fight in the Iran War

The Next Fight in the Iran War

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