WASHINGTON — From her podium, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the early U.S. air strikes against Iran were “twice the scale” of the missile bombardment American forces launched against Iraq in 2003 before American troops invaded.
At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. will not get bogged down in a yearslong campaign in Iran. “This is not Iraq. This is not endless,” Hegseth told reporters this week. “Our generation knows better.”
And in the chambers of Congress, Democratic lawmakers raised the legacies of recent wars — Iraq and Afghanistan, in particular — to argue against a war with Iran that could mushroom into a deadly and expensive conflict.
In the week after President Donald Trump triggered an open-ended military campaign against Iran, Congress twice declined to check the president’s ability to continue the latest American war in the Middle East.
On Thursday evening, the House, in a 212-219 vote, rejected a resolution to end U.S. hostilities against Iran except when American forces are defending against an “imminent” attack. 
New Jersey’s three Republicans, Reps. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd), Chris Smith (R-4th) and Tom Kean Jr. (R-7th), voted against the legislation. Every New Jersey Democrat, including Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-5th), a hawkish member who often votes with Republicans on Israel-focused topics, voted for the measure.
The House vote followed a Wednesday roll-call vote in the Senate. Senators voted 47-53, with all but one Republican against and every Democrat but Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman in favor. New Jersey’s senators, Democrats Cory Booker and Andy Kim, co-sponsored and voted for the Senate resolution.
The joint U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran are likely to intensify, military officials and members of Congress said this week.
U.S. and Israeli forces began a bombing campaign this weekend against Iran, which then counterattacked. Trump said the war could last four to five weeks, but he and U.S. military leaders have also indicated it could run longer.
“This resolution would tie the hands of the president of the United States,” Van Drew said of the House bill. “We should not allow this to happen,” he said. “America will not wait to be hit first. We will not gamble with American lives.”
In an interview with NJ Spotlight News, Smith said Trump did not need to brief Congress before bombing Iran. “I think the element of surprise means fewer casualties on our part,” he said.
“The Trump administration has refused to have the United States bullied by Iran,” Smith said later from the House floor.
Lawmakers are expecting the administration to submit a supplemental funding request for a package of weapons and military equipment for the war. That bill would have to pass both chambers and overcome the 60-vote threshold in the Senate needed for funding legislation.
Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine led all-members briefings of members of Congress.
The briefers said there could be a range of Iranian targets, such as U.S. embassies, beyond military bases, Kim said.
A former diplomat and military adviser during the Obama administration, Kim said he worried the war could draw down U.S. military stockpiles of weapons, leaving a tactical opening for a foreign power, such as Russia or China.
“The only people that are really benefitting from this right now are Putin and Xi,” Kim said, referencing Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. “Probably just gleefully watching the United States yet again get bogged down in an open-ended conflict in the Middle East.”
The parallels between the burgeoning U.S.-Iran war and the attack on and subsequent invasion of Iraq in 2003 are vivid, down to the intense airstrikes the George W. Bush administration ordered in March 2003, a phase called “Shock and Awe”, Kim said.
“It feels so similar,” he said. “‘Shock and Awe’ was over 1,000 strikes in the first day. That’s exactly what we had here.”
In the Iraq War, the U.S. had support from a coalition for forces from NATO member countries and allies. That’s not the case in the early going of the Iran conflict.
“We’re so isolated and so alone right now,” Kim told reporters, adding that Iran has a network of terrorist allies. “We’re going up against an even more formidable adversary than we did in Iraq.”
To drum up support for the Iraq invasion, the Bush administration pressed its case for war, warning Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction” that could kill on a wide scale. Then-Vice President Dick Cheney went on TV to talk about it. Colin Powell, secretary of State at the time, famously went to the United Nations to whip support.
Similarities abound elsewhere. Iraq and Iran are rich in oil and gas. Substitute “weapons of mass destruction” then for nuclear weapons now. The heads of both nations oversaw violent regimes.
Unlike this war, Congress debated, voted on and passed two authorizations, made law after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that first gave the administration specific legal authority to pursue counterterrorism methods against the attackers and then, later, to use military force against Iraq.
That first authorization became law days after the 2001 attacks and sailed through Congress. The second passed a year later, 2002. Few members are still in office who voted for it. Among New Jersey members, all are gone now but Smith, who voted for the war, and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th), who voted against it.
“Back then, the drums of war were deafening and the pressure in Washington was immense,” Pallone said in a statement Thursday after voting for the resolution. “Now we are watching the same reckless playbook unfold again.”
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th) said the president is ignoring the warnings of the Iraq War, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives and an estimated $1.79 trillion, excluding ongoing medical costs to troops, according to Brown University research.
“Donald Trump is repeating many of the same mistakes we saw America make in Iraq and he is doing so without even attempting to appeal to the American people or their representatives in Congress,” Watson Coleman said.
Members, like Texas Democrat Joaquin Castro, who came to Congress in 2013, harkened back to the history that followed Sept. 11, 2001.
“President Trump is now asking a new generation of Americans to sacrifice in the hope that this time it will go differently than Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya,” Castro said. “How is this ‘America First?’”
Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin urged Congress to flex its authority on Iran as the sole branch of government that can declare war.
“Whether you think this war is the most brilliant strategic breakthrough and moral cause since World War II, or you think it’s an absolutely strategic blunder built on lies like the last wars in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan,” Raskin said, “can we not agree…that it’s up to us?”
As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump called the Iraq war a “big fat mistake” and has pined to be named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
At the White House Thursday, Trump called upon the Iranian people to arm themselves and topple the brutal regime, which killed thousands in recent months. “You’ll be perfectly safe with total immunity or you’ll face absolutely certain death, and I don’t want to see that,” Trump said.
After the classified House briefing, Norcross, a member of the House committee that oversees the Pentagon, was thinking about the accuracy of what Trump administration officials told Congress.
“Are we acting on the right intelligence and we are interpreting it the right way? I think that’s driving most of this discussion,” Norcross, comparing the Iraq and Iran wars, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News.
With Iraq, he said, “the intelligence was proved to be faulty.”
Asked if he trusted the intelligence on Iran, Norcross paused for seven seconds.
“I’m going to skip that one.”
