By using the actual legal and official name of the department (which Trump didn’t and couldn’t change)?

> Fleeing is seen as dishonorable

Tell that to the soldiers in the famously almost universally ineffective militaries of almost all the countries in the Arab world.

The US has a constitution as well? It seems pretty worthless these days since nobody is willing to enforce it..

You are implying that Trump is rational and/or the interests of his administration align with those of the country?

I am making no implications of Trump, very on purpose to keep this in point (it's hard), but explicitly stating that the policies of the United States are based on capitalism and always have been, while the narrative given and received is that of humanitarianism, which in my opinion is a side effect only. In this case hopefully a positive one, hence my concern for the reckless nature of the war (let's just call it what it is, not just an attack or military action).

> In 1953, Iran was a secular and democratic

That glosses over a huge amount of details. Calling it democratic is a huge stretch.

> They had elected a prime minister

The election of 1952 were rigged (seemingly by both sides) and not free at all. The vote was even stopped early and almost half the seats left empty.

Mosaddegh was also already in power (being appointed by the Shah) before these “democratic” elections and his reforms were already underway.

This also includes indirect deaths?

But if you add up the Iraq-Iran war and all his domestic atrocities it’s not that far (and these are only direct casualties).

US is not at war with Iran. Only the Congress has the right to declare war.

Ok, call it a "special military operation" if you want. A war by any other name would smell just as bad.

And what is Congress - or any other part of the US government - going to do about the pedophile not following rules? Stop him? How? Every potential check and balance has either been defanged or is controlled by his supporters.

Probably nothing. Also it’s not like the Democrats have much moral high ground to stand on here either (considering that Obama did more or less the same thing several times).

But congress can of course stop Trump from doing this and a whole bunch of other stuff. The problem is that it just chose not to and to give up much of its powers to the executive over the years (in practice if not legally) due to partisan reasons..

Why can't you be at war without officially declaring it? We have had lots of wars not declared by congress. Korean War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq. This seems like a weird way to think.

Explicit authorization is still required even if there there is no explicit declaration of war.

The caveat being that the president only needs to get the approval of congress after 60 days.

And of course Obama established a precedent with his intervention in Libya which weakened this even more…

Being required legally doesn't change the actual fact of war. Sure it is breaking the law. I don't see how Libya is the one in the long list to set this precedent of illegally non-declared war.

US has one of the unhealthiest populations amongst developed countries too, so maybe it’s not that surprising.

US did rename the Department of Defense to Department of War so not sure how much posing is left..

> Defending one's own country is not evil

What if the your country’s government is the biggest threat to it, though?