Former Sen. Jim Webb asks some important questions about the Iran crisis in an excellent op-ed today:

How did it become acceptable to assassinate one of the top military officers of a country with whom we are not formally at war during a public visit to a third country that had no opposition to his presence? And what precedent has this assassination established on the acceptable conduct of nation-states toward military leaders of countries with which we might have strong disagreement short of actual war — or for their future actions toward our own people?

Webb has long been one of the most thoughtful American public servants and writers, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Anything that he has to say on this subject is worth listening to. TAC readers will remember that Webb broke ranks with the Republican Party and ultimately left the party because of his strong, principled objections to the Iraq war, and then won a Senate race in Virginia in large part because of that opposition. Webb’s foreign policy sanity was not limited to opposing that war, but extended to other issues as well. When Obama launched an illegal, unauthorized war against the Libyan government, Webb was one of the few from the Democratic side to criticize that. There are few with more credibility to speak on these issues than he has.

Webb reminds us that he opposed designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization when he was in the Senate. He did so because it makes no sense to define a branch of another government’s military this way:

It is legally and logically impossible to define one part of a national government as an international terrorist organization without applying the term to that entire government.

Definitions define conduct. If terrorist organizations are actively involved against us, we attack them. But a terrorist organization is by definition a nongovernmental entity that operates along the creases of national sovereignties and international law.

The IRGC designation was a mistake, as I said at the time, and it opened the door to exactly the kind of military action against Iran that critics of this designation have warned against for years. A government does not designate a branch of another state’s military unless it is looking for an excuse to use force against that state. This is what I wrote about it back in 2017 before it happened:

It is very risky to start labeling part of another state’s armed forces as terrorists, since it creates a pretext for starting an unnecessary war.

Webb turns to the Soleimani assassination. He discusses the practical dangers that arise from it:

The assassination of the most well-known military commander of a country with which we are not formally at war during his visit to a third country that had not opposed his presence invites a lax moral justification for a plethora of retaliatory measures — and not only from Iran. It also holds the possibility of more deeply entrenching the U.S. military in a region that most Americans would very much prefer to deal with from a more maneuverable distance.

I would add that the assassination also reflects the extent to which the irrational fixation with a grossly inflated threat from Iran has been allowed to drive the U.S. towards unnecessary conflict. A less ideological and more sober view of the so-called threat from Iran would lead us to spend much less time obsessing over what a medium-sized regional power on the other side of the world is doing. We should also realize that the U.S. faces no real threats from Iran except for the ones that we allow ourselves to face by building up such a larger military presence on their doorstep.

The Trump administration is responsible for creating the Iran crisis, but they have been helped in this by a foreign policy establishment and Congress that have failed to challenge the administration’s destructive Iran policy. Webb calls on Congress to change that:

The first such debate should focus on the administration’s unilateral decision to label an entire element of a foreign government an international terrorist organization. If Congress wishes to hold Iran to such a standard, it should then formally authorize the use of force against Iran’s government. The failure of congressional leadership to make these kinds of decisions is an example of why our foreign policy has become so militarized, and of how weak and even irrelevant Congress has allowed itself to become in the eyes of our citizens.

If we want our foreign policy to be more democratic and accountable, we have to insist that our representatives reclaim their role in checking the executive’s overreaching and reckless behavior. It is inadequate to wait until the president creates a new crisis or starts a new war for Congress to take action, because by then it is often too late. Americans have to unlearn the deference that we are used to showing to presidents in these matters, because the presidency is simply too powerful and the consequences are too grave to keep doing what we have been doing for the last several decades.