“I Served This Country. The Republican Party Just Spit on My Oath.”

– Private First Class Michael Christopher, Nebraska, USA

Who I am is irrelevant. What matters is I’m a Marine veteran. Two tours. I know what it means to follow a lawful order. I know what it means when the chain of command breaks down.

The chain of command broke.

Today, House Republicans “gaveled out a pro forma session” which means ended it early, on purpose — so Democrats couldn’t even force a vote on a war powers resolution to bring this Iran war under congressional oversight. Just shut it down and walked away.

In the Senate, the vote was 47-53. Rand Paul was the only Republican with enough spine to vote yes. One of 53.

13 American service members are already dead.

Let me tell you what that vote means to me. It means the Republican Party has now formally co-signed a war that nobody authorized. A war started without congressional approval, without a declaration, without an AUMF, and — according to Senator Kaine, even in a classified briefing — without a single piece of evidence that the United States faced an imminent threat.

They didn’t just vote for the war. They voted against their own constitutional authority to oversee it. They handed over the war power — the most serious power the Congress holds — to one man. Because they were afraid of a Truth Social post.

Now let me tell you what I think is actually going on. Because nobody wants to say it plainly.

Russia’s oil tax revenue doubled to $9 billion in April because of this war. The same war the administration had no coherent public strategy for. The same war that started two days after peace talks showed progress. The same war that the vice president was in Budapest campaigning for a pro-Kremlin strongman when Kharg Island was being struck.

There’s your strategy. It just doesn’t have anything to do with American security.

Oil at $116 a barrel benefits every petro-state on the planet. It benefits US oil companies posting record profits. It locks in a world where fossil fuel energy dependence is permanent, where the military is the enforcer, where Straits become toll booths and the United States Navy is the enforcement agency. NATO was never interesting to this president because NATO is an alliance. Alliances share power. This model concentrates power and pins it our dirtiest asset. And then rents our men and women in the military. To protect the oil flowing to whoever pays.

I ran a small landscaping company in Nebraska after I got out. I built something. I followed the rules. I paid my taxes and I trusted that the people I voted for were at minimum trying to protect the country I served.

The Speaker of the House called the war powers resolution a “terrible, dangerous idea.”

You know what’s a terrible, dangerous idea? Handing one man the permanent authority to start wars that make his allies rich, with no accountability, no authorization, and no exit strategy.

Every Republican who voted no today owns what comes next.

Every casualty. Every dollar to Putin’s war chest. Every civilian killed in a war they never debated and never authorized.

You don’t get to hide behind “support the troops” when you just voted to make sure the troops answer to one man instead of the Constitution.

I know my oath. I kept it. They just broke theirs.