Ben Rhodes

Marco Rubio, who had been castigating Obama for his weakness and passivity and not attacking Assad, came out and said he would vote against congressional authorization.

Because members of Congress know that war is ultimately unpopular because it costs money, it can cost American lives, and it's just bad.

I think you don't have to be an expert to know that war is bad.

And so the way you stop it is you insist.

That there will not be a war without congressional authorization.

And if there is, the president will be impeached, which is, by the way, what's in the Constitution and implicit in the War Powers Act passed by Congress.

Because if presidents had to ask for permission from the people's elected representatives for every use of military force, we would use it a lot less.

Frankly, the founders left it.

It's right there in front of our eyes, John.

There'd be no war in Iran if Trump needed a vote from Congress before he bombed Iran.

If we just followed the law the way the founders intended, they were pretty smart, those guys.

Yes.

That's right.

Look, I think we have to come to terms with the fact that we have an empire.

We've been acting as if we do.

Because if I talk to some friends from other places, I have a lot of friends from Afghanistan, and what they say to me is, this is what you want.

This is what empires do.

They break things on the periphery.

They keep the rest of the world violent and chaotic so that you can dominate things.

And so in some ways, what looked like messy outcomes to us, oh, all these countries are such a mess, that is kind of how empires tend to operate.