Congressman Adam Smith

Well, thank you, Nat.

Appreciate the opportunity.

Yeah, there's two separate conversations here.

One is the policy around the Iran war itself, which is deeply troubling.

And I know we'll get into that in a little bit when we talk about that piece of it.

The only problem with the analysis that you have is it sort of takes us down a procedural path, which is fine.

I think it is really important.

Who has the power to commit forces?

How do you handle that?

But right now in the short term,

The more important part is we are stuck in a bad place and Iran never should have got in there in the first place.

So how do we get out of it?

But with that said, I will walk down the procedural role.

And yes, this is a 200 plus year battle between the executive and the congressional branch.

The founding fathers made the president the commander in chief of our armed forces, which empowers him to use those armed forces as he sees fit.

And then very vaguely gave Congress the power to declare war.

They do not define what war is or anything about it.

and historically the president has exercised his power as commander in chief in a way that congress has been very very hard pressed to stop so as a practical matter yes the the president and all presidents have had this power and they've used it in a variety of different ways um gosh president clinton you know started hostilities against serbia and kosovo without congressional approval that ended before 60 days

But Congress actually voted on it and we voted it down.

It was a tie vote, but it didn't pass and he went ahead anyway.