There definitely are more than a few questions that are going to come out of this in regards to how the rest of the world views the United States.
Without declaring war, we've engaged in a war. We struck first without provocation, and we've targeted civilians.
It's going to make it awfully hard from here on out for the United States to cite international law when foreign actors mistreat Americans. This, of course, coming after what the Trump administration did to Venezuelan fishermen in an effort to incite action from Maduro.
This also brings up a bigger question for the U.S. domestically. I've watched MAGA people this weekend excusing this as Iran being a rogue nation and Khamenei a bad guy, which is true.
So that means we don't have to follow our own laws? What makes us any different than Iran or North Korea or Russia?
It's kind of a rhetorical question. After years of watching guys like Tucker Carlson and Scott Jennings use "the rule of law" to rationalize right-wing American lawmakers abusing their own citizens for no reason other than they could stretch the letter of the law to obscene degrees, we've in five years just decided to ignore laws when it came to Donald Trump simply because he had millions of rabid supporters. Then SCOTUS gave the chief executive almost limitless immunity, which is so opposed to common sense it's grotesque.
Congress has the power to check him, but doesn't.
Law is only worth something if the people that enforce them choose to enforce them and do so dispassionately.
We'll put a guy living in poverty in jail for having marijuana, but we won't rein in a president for breaking laws that have been on the books for centuries when his actions could destroy thousands of lives or more.
There are going to have to be some hard decisions made in a few months in regards to our law. They won't be popular with a lot of people, but Americans need to start thinking about whether the rules matter or not, and, if they don't, they need to accept that they are living in an anarchy.
