Hello, and welcome to the David Frum show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at the Atlantic.

My guest this week will be Alistair Campbell, co-host of the extraordinarily successful British

podcast, The Rest is Politics. Previously, he served as the most intimate aid of British Prime

Minister Tony Blair, and he worked especially in that capacity on the US-UK relationship.

And in this time of war in the Middle East, I thought Campbell, who is such a central figure in the U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S.K. partnership in the Iraq War of 2003 could cast light on what is right and what is wrong in the U.S. U.S. U.S. U.S. U.K. relationship in this war in the Persian Gulf. My book this week will be a novel, the director by the German writer Daniel Kelman, published in 2023 and translated in 2025.

It's a fascinating study of moral compromise in the production of art and also relevant to many

of the questions Americans are wrestling with today. Before I turn to any of that, let me begin with

some opening thoughts about the raging and intensifying and escalating

and prolonging conflict that the United States is waging in the Persian Gulf against the Islamic

Republic of Iran. I record this podcast on the morning of Monday. You will probably watch or listen

to it somewhat later, and so you may know more about current events than I do. I will not try to

keep up with the military situation of the Gulf.

I want to talk instead about an increasing constitutional crisis that this war poses at home.

This war, as at the time I record and probably still at the time you watch or listen to it,

has not in any way been authorized by Congress.

And it needs to be emphasized how unusual this is.

I composed a short list of the major conflicts the United States has fought since 1945.

Korea, Vietnam, the invasion of Granada in 1983, the Panama invasion in 1989, the Gulf War in 1990,

Somalia, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libya War, the ISIS War that started in 2014 as sort of an aftershock of the Iraq War.

Now, it is impressive how many of these wars had explicit congressional authorization. The Gulf War was authorized by Congress, the Afghanistan War was authorized by Congress, the Iraq War was authorized by Congress. The Afghanistan War was

authorized by Congress. The Iraq War was authorized by Congress. Now, other wars were not,

but they still had a legal basis. The Korean War, for example, was not authorized by Congress

...