Country Joe McDonald died over the weekend. His long career in popular music and stalwart support of military veterans got a huge kickoff with his performance at Woodstock of his anti-war anthem, I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag. (The link will take you to a family-friendly version, without the “Gimme an F,” countdown.)

Country Joe was against war. The writers of the Constitution didn’t like it much, either. They knew too much about it and the suffering it causes.

Why the Constitution gives war power to Congress

The writers of the Constitution had all experienced a war: the American Revolution. The power to start a war had belonged to King George III, as was usual in those days, and that was one big reason the Americans did not want a king. There’s an excellent explanation of this on the Committee For the Republic website.

They had just lived through a war that cost three times as many military deaths, in proportion to the population, as the Vietnam War did; the deaths from that war still haunt many Americans. There were more deaths in the Revolution: people died of starvation or disease, Native Americans died on both sides and in their own homes, as well as being driven from their land. Some Black people went over to the British hoping for their freedom only to meet a miserable death. The American Revolution also cost thousands of non-combatant deaths, destroyed the economy, disrupted trade, and destroyed farmland, crops, and livestock. If you’d like to know more about its effect, I recommend Ken Burns’s excellent series The American Revolution that ran on PBS this past fall.

“No king” meant “no starting wars.”

So they set up a system that was supposed to prevent exactly what’s happening now: A president  with no direct experience of war has decided it would be a good idea to attack Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, boats in the eastern Pacific and the Caribbean Sea, and to start ferocious bombing of civilian targets in Iran. Such a president would be restrained from acts of war by a Congress that knew the costs of war, both in financial terms, and in the deaths of capable people who had promising lives ahead of them.

“That’s the way it is.”

President Donald Trump gave a verbal shrug to the first three deaths of American military personnel in the attack on Iran, saying, “That’s the way it is.” Aside from being an astonishingly callous characterization of the deaths of people under his command, it’s a true statement. That is the way war is. Destructive. And, in many cases, pointless.

Congress has totally wimped out on doing its duty. Republican members of Congress have swatted aside two big chances to stand up, show some backbone, and do their duty to the country. It should not be a big surprise to Americans, because we’ve been on this course of action—or inaction—for quite a while.

Congress last declared war in 1941.

The last time Congress declared war was World War II.

Since then, the United States has been engaged in conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf, and those are just the big ones. The stated objective, when there was one, was to prevent takeovers by communist governments or to convert the people of those countries from enemies to allies. The United States has failed in those objectives every single time.

We have not learned the lesson we taught the British in the Revolution: that military superiority does not outweigh a people’s determination to run their own lives, their own business, their own government. The British were militarily superior to the Americans, but lost the colonies. If you just use military measures—battles won, casualties, etc., the United States won in Vietnam. Superior force could not prevent a communist takeover. The communists were Vietnamese, and we were not.

People everywhere will fight against a foreign invasion. Trying to bomb a population into submission will only create more bitter enemies.

And it’s one-two-three what are we fighting for?

We are apparently fighting to thwart Iranian terrorism worldwide, and to destroy the Iranian navy. (I say “apparently” because it’s often difficult to determine exactly what President Donald Trump is talking about.) Attacking the country will only make Iranians more dependent on the weapon of the weak, which is what terrorism is. In the case of Iran, we are apparently fighting to destroy the Iranian navy.

According to the World Directory of Modern Military Warships, Iran’s navy is the 19th most powerful naval force in the world, and the United States is first. Not your classic fair fight. The main harm the Iranian navy is doing is harassing shipping in the Persian Gulf, especially the straits of Hormuz, and interfering with the export of oil.

Ah, yes. Oil. Is that what we’re fighting for? Again?