Bulwark Takes - Sen. Kaine on Iran War: “Have we learned nothing?”

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Sam Stein talks with Senator Tim Kaine as he forces a Senate vote to block Trump from waging war with Iran without congressional approval. Kaine says lawmakers are ducking their constitutional duty and warns the administration’s rationale echoes the run-up to Iraq. If senators want this war, he argues, they should have the guts to put their names on it.Delegate smarter and grow faster. Post your job for free at https://Upwork.com and connect with top freelance talent today.

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2,600, to speak to an advisor free of charge. BenMGGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullock, and I am joined by Senator Tim Kaine, the Great Commonwealth of Virginia. I got that right this time. We're here to talk about what's happening in Iran and the effort to pass

War Powers Resolution. Senator, thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. You and I've had this conversation a couple times throughout your time in public office because you're a champion of actual congressional input into acts of war. Yes. It appears yet again that Congress is going to skirt the idea of voting on what is clearly an act of war by Pete Hexas' own omission.

Why should we feel any different or, any more confident that a war powers resolution would pass this go-around? And how do you keep banging this drum knowing that it's likely to have been met by defeat? Sam, so a couple of things. When I became senator in 2013, I came out of an experience where I'd been governor and had watched thousands of my National Guard troops deploy into Iraq and Afghanistan. And I went to deployments and I went to homecomings and I went to wakes and funerals. And I just vowed when I became a senator that I would do everything I can to make sure we didn't go into war, except for a really good reason after a congressional debate and vote,

and that we should do everything possible to avoid stupid wars. And my advocacy around this, I may or may not be successful. I haven't yet been successful in this. I've been at it for 13 years, whether it's a Democrat or Republican president, I hold them to the constitutional standard. I feel like I'm duty-bound to do it by my oath, but also by my connection to our troops. As you know, Virginia, very military-heavy state, very pro-military. I got a kid in the in the armed services. And so I just believe there shouldn't

be an easy pass lane or a shortcut on going to war. In this particular case, we have a war powers resolution. As you point out, it's a privileged motion that the statute gives us to challenge a president who has taken the nation into hostilities without a congressional authorization. In that circumstance, A president has initiated hostilities without Congress. You can force a vote on the floor of the Senate. That's what I'm doing together with my Republican colleague Rand Paul. That vote will be tomorrow. And it's a simple page long resolution, no war against Iran without a vote of Congress.

I will get virtually every Democrat Republicans, you know, kind of have to look in the mirror and listen to their constituents and decide whether they think more war in the Middle East is a good idea. I think it's a horrible idea. But even if you think it's a good idea, you shouldn't want a president to do it unilaterally without a rationale and without a plan, which is where President Trump is now proceeding. So the conventional wisdom is that members don't like voting on these things because they don't want to be on the record having supported a overseas military engagement that could go terribly wrong. Is that your assessment of your fellow colleagues? Yes, Sam, and actually that congressional lack of backbone goes back to wigs and federalists. It's not just 2026. Even though the Constitution is super clear on this, and both the Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention minutes make very plain that as much as they love George Washington, they didn't even trust George Washington to make a decision about war on his own because it's too consequential.

Members of Congress realized pretty early in our nation's history that war votes are tough, that even under the best of circumstances, people might die. And under lesser circumstances, you can really get into a jam. And so members of Congress would, in many instances, prefer to hide under their desk, let a president do it, blame him if it goes wrong. If it goes right, say, hey, we are with you all along. But as I said, not only because it's in the Constitution, but there is a value judgment expressed in that provision that says if we're going to send our sons and daughters into war where they face death or injury, we should only do it if we have the guts to have the debate in front of the American public and say this is a mission.

It's worth it. And if we won't do that work. Let me just jump in. I'm kind of curious because in a way, so we had this a version of this debate a couple weeks a month ago on Venezuela. And in a way, correct me if I'm a moment ago. And in a way, correct me if I'm wrong, there appeared to be more appetite on the Republican side for putting this to a vote than there is now. Now, we don't know the final outcome of tomorrow's vote, obviously.

But, you know, we have people like Josh Holly who've come out very quickly and said, not going to vote in favor of this. They believe that President Trump has the authority do what he wants. Whereas Holly was more hemming and hauling prior to the Venezuel vote. What do you account for here to make, to understand the differences in circumstances? That's a hard one. The first time I brought up a war powers resolution in Trump term two, I only got one Republican vote on the Venezuelan vote a month or so ago. I got five votes, but then Donald Trump really whipped hard. He canceled the second invasion in Venezuela. He agreed to finally have a public hearing and send his secretary state up to brief Congress in public, not classified, and then two of the five switched to nose. I ended up with three votes. This one seems like it's harder. And that may be because people think Iran is a bad actor. And look, nobody's warning that the Ayatollah is gone. But just to remind people, you know, we said Iraq was a bad actor and it was, we were liberators and mission accomplished after a couple weeks. And then it turned into a decade. I mean, we lost

14,000 troops and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 66,000 injured hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, $8 trillion of U.S. taxpayer money, these wars in the Middle East, you might think they're going to be smooth sailing or that you're up against a bad actor, but they can produce a power vacuum. Well, that's all the more reasons why they don't want to vote for it, right? They don't want to be on record. And that's all the more reason than they should. And so while they may vote against my resolution, they will all have been forced to vote. I learned early if you let people off the hook by, well, I'm concerned. or I want a briefing or I wouldn't have I would have done it differently.

That's just too easy and too cheap. Make people go on the record and then they're going to be held accountable by their voters for whether they were for war or against it at this moment in time. Bullwork takes a sponsor by Upwork. One of the biggest growth hacks I've come across is realizing that you don't have to do it all yourself. The fastest growing businesses aren't doing more. They're just delegating smarter. And that's exactly what Upwork lets you do.

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growing businesses already trust upwork for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free that is upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow that's upwkwork.com upwork Well, let's talk a bit about briefings because there's been a few, I think, of what's happened in Iran up on the hill. We saw Hegsef and Rubio, among others, up there. To the extent that you're able to reveal it, what have you been told about the rationale for going in there? I know there's been about three or four, maybe five different ones. But what is the, if you had to sort of say, this is where the administration is in terms of the rationale for going

for what they have done. And this is where the administration is in terms of how long it's going to take and what they're hoping to produce. Can you do that? I can. I can, Sam. So I haven't been to a briefing yet. I will go to one this afternoon.

So everything I'm going to tell you right now, it's not based on what I heard in a skiff. It was based on news accounts. The news accounts of the Rubio briefing of the Gang of Aid, sort of the key leadership, chair and ranking on the key appropriations and national. security committee said they were asked the question, well, why now? What was imminent about now? And the Rubio answer was deeply troubling. Well, Israel was going to attack. And if Israel attacked, we would face some retaliation. So we decided to go ahead and go in. We should not let any nation, even an ally, drag us into war or determine the timing that the U.S. goes to war. So the fact that

Israel is going to attack anyway, that's no reason for us to send our own kids into face risk of death and injury. Sadly, we've already seen six service members killed. We shouldn't do this because well, Israel was going to attack anyway. That's about the worst rationale for war that I've ever heard come out of anybody's mouth. This was public reporting from that briefing I didn't attend. So is it accurate or not? I don't know. But if that was said, that would, that should cause All right, let's play a game here then, because you will get a briefing, you'll get a chance to ask, I presume some members of the administration, some questions about what is going on here. What's the one, if you only got a chance to do one question, what would it be?

Sam, here's the way they do it. They jam the presentations. They give you an hour. They do presentations for 45 minutes and with 100 senators in the room, then they take three questions. Well, let's say you got asked. But, you know, the legal rationale, what was imminent? What are your targeting criteria? The news is out that we struck a school and 170 possibly little school children were killed. The U.S. is usually really good at targeting and avoiding hitting

women and children. We've been very precise in the boat strikes in the Pacific and Caribbean on that, even though I don't think those are legally authorized. I do acknowledge there's been an effort thus far successful to minimize killing women and children. So how strike a school killing kids? If we changed our targeting criteria, or is it a mistake? Why did Kuwait shoot down three U.S. F-15s? They're a friendly nation. Normally, they're not shooting down American aircraft. It was a mistake. That suggests some lack of planning or preparation when that happened. So the rationale, the planning and preparation, and then especially what's going to happen next, or do you even care? You assassinate the leader of a country, do you care who comes next?

Do you have a favorite? What's your prediction? If it's just the regime back in power, like Deli Rodriguez is back in power in Venezuela, and the regime continues to oppress Iranian citizens every day, are you going to claim that this was a good outcome? So I think you're going to see a lot of questions about what comes next. I know we're kind of pressed on time. I have two more questions here. One is you have constituents in Virginia that I presume at least some of them are living abroad. in the Middle East. Yes. There was an alert that went out yesterday from the State Department, encouraging every American in 14 Middle Eastern countries to get out. It was rather abrupt. And then this morning, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem said,

we cannot help you get out. We don't have the capacity to do that. Yeah. Are you getting incoming from your constituents who are in the Middle East about how to get out? What are the interactions you're having with? them, how are you trying to assist in their departure from the region? It's chaotic, Sam, and I can't speak for my entire team. I have a constituent service team that's taking a lot of incoming, and I'm so focused on this vote tomorrow that I haven't checked in with them, but I have had two

interactions just myself. One is somebody in Saudi Arabia, who's a friend who was trying to board a flight to Washington, could he get out? And the good, he reached out to me and said, what do I need to do before I could even figure it out. He was on a plane to D.C. Thank goodness. And then my hometown university, Virginia Commonwealth University, has a campus in Doha, Qatar. And they've switched all their classes to online

because they're so worried about Iranian sort of, you know, broadening the net in terms of retaliatory attacks. And we've seen that happen. So these things come home. The sailors on the USS Ford, the carrier strike group heavily from Virginia. And this is a carrier that's been out, supposed to be out for seven months. I think we're passing nine or 10 months.

It's on its way to maybe an 11-month deployment with some major issues on board that need to be solved. And our sailors haven't seen their families in months. And I am getting questions from family members. What's the goal? What's the plan? When will I see my kid? When will I see my husband? All right.

All right. All right. You're old, but you're not that old. Sorry. Don't be insulting. You were not. 68. Well, you were not in Congress in 2002, 2003.

Let's just put it that way. Right. That was a different time for Democrats, obviously, and I think you alluded to it, where there's this perception that the Iraq war would go swimmingly well or that you had to be patriotic and support it. And so a lot of luminaries in the party leading figures did vote for it. In fact, it ended up being the biggest point of distinction between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton a couple years later. I don't sense there is that the mode of thinking right now among Democrats.

And I'm kind of curious if you can give us a sense of what the vibe is like, for lack of a bad word, inside the party. Yeah, Sam, I think the vibe is, have we learned nothing from 25 years? I mean, I think that is the vibe. When I came into the Senate in 2013, one of the reasons I so embraced this, we got to get it right on war, is watching the the mistaken vote on 02. Remember, President Bush brought the vote to Congress right before the midterm in October, even though the attack didn't happen until March. Wait, why bring the vote in October? It was designed to affect the midterms. And I watched it at the time with no intelligence that I had access to. I was lieutenant governor. But I thought, man, there's got to be a better way to

make a decision about going to war than to force a vote right before a midterm election. So I came into Congress very much shaped by Iraq and Afghan decisions. And that has made me extremely passionate about no easy pass lane, no shortcut. You got to get it right and let Congress sign their name to it before we order people to risk their lives. All right. Senator Kane, we've been doing this on and off for many years now. I always appreciate when you come and join us and talk about this stuff. Thank you for doing this.

And thank you for everyone who watched. As always, do sign up for the Bullock where you get great conversations just like this. Talk to you soon.