David French
speaker
3,314 appearances
17 recordings
3 series
first heard Nov 2025
last heard 19 Sep
David French’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 17 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 4.
Appearances
So I'll do the yes part first.
It's absolutely true that there have been multiple armed conflicts fought since World War II without congressional approval.
Most notably, the Korean War was fought under a UN resolution.
For example, the Libyan bombing campaign that began in 2011, that was under a UN resolution.
Now,
If you want to sort of break it down legally, the argument that those presidents of both Truman and Obama would make around the Korean War and the Libyan intervention was that, well, we've ratified the UN Treaty.
So we did have Senate ratification of the UN Treaty, and under the UN Treaty, the Security Council members are empowered to use armed forces when the Security Council says so.
So there's at least some argument there that that's still connected to our process.
However, at the same time, when people say, oh, we never go to Congress anymore,
That's just wrong.
So in the Vietnam War, we had the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which I think was stretched beyond its purpose, but it still existed.
Before Desert Storm, George H.W.
Bush not only got a U.N.
resolution, he got congressional authorization.
After 9-11, Bush could have struck the Taliban without Congress after that attack on the U.S., but he went ahead and got congressional authorization.
Before Operation Iraqi Freedom, the invasion of Iraq, he had
Department of Justice lawyers telling him he did not have to get congressional authorization, but he went and he got congressional authorization and UN resolution.
And so we have had in our largest armed conflicts really
since Korea have all had some form of congressional authorization or UN Security Council authorization.
And in this circumstance, it's a direct attack on a nation state, Iran, without congressional authorization, without a UN Security Council resolution, and without it being an immediate self-defense.
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