When the Republic sends its soldiers into the sky

The Hill reports that a United States Air Force colonel has spoken publicly about surviving the shoot-down of his F-15E fighter over Iran, an incident that occurred in the early months of what is described as a U.S.-Israeli conflict with that nation. I was not present for any of this, and I claim no technical knowledge of the aircraft or the engagement. But I know what it means to send a man into the field under the flag of his country, and I know what the Republic owes him in return.

The first obligation is honesty of purpose. No officer — no soldier, no sailor, no airman — should be placed in mortal danger without the clearest possible account of why the nation has chosen to fight, what it intends to achieve, and by whose legitimate authority the order was given. I presided over a war begun by colonial legislatures and ratified by a Continental Congress. The Constitution your framers later wrote placed the power to declare war in the hands of the legislature precisely because that body is closest to the people who must bear the cost. I am told, by inference from the reports available to me, that the contours of this conflict with Iran may not have been subject to the full and formal deliberation that such a commitment deserves. If that inference is wrong, I am glad to be corrected. If it is right, the Republic should correct it.

The second obligation is the preservation of civilian command. The colonel's survival is a matter of individual courage and of fortune — and I honor both without reservation. But the question that follows every downed aircraft is not merely tactical. It is constitutional. Who directs the use of force? Are those directing it accountable to the people through their representatives? A general or an alliance partner cannot be the final answer to that question in a republic. Nor can a president acting alone. The genius of our compact was precisely that no single hand should hold both the sword and the purse.

The third obligation is proportionality of entanglement. I warned in my own time against permanent alliances that bind a nation's fate to the quarrels of others without clear benefit to itself. I did not mean by this that a republic should be friendless or indifferent to the world. I meant that every alliance, every intervention, every commitment of force should be weighed coolly — against the nation's interest, against the costs to its people, against the risk of being drawn deeper than wisdom permits. A conflict with Iran, whatever its origins, carries precisely those risks. Whether the entanglement is wise, I cannot say from the outside. That it demands rigorous public accounting, I am certain.

The colonel who survived and chose to speak did a service to the Republic. Soldiers who bear witness to what war actually costs — in flesh, in nerve, in the long aftermath — perform a civic function that no politician's speech can replicate. The counsel I would leave is simple: let the account this officer has given prompt not merely admiration, but inquiry. Ask who authorized this fight. Ask what the objective is. Ask whether the legislature has been a full partner in the decision. Honor the soldier; interrogate the policy. That is not disloyalty. That is the Republic doing its proper work.