We have under two weeks; Congress needs to act

Published 1:30 am Friday, April 10, 2026

I joined the United States Air Force because I believed this country meant what it said. Not naively — I understood the gap between ideal and practice. But I believed the arc was real, that each generation inherited a republic slightly less capable of its worst impulses than the one before. I did three combat tours on that belief. Iraq. Kuwait. Afghanistan. I came home to Bainbridge Island still holding most of it.

Now, I’m holding less of it than I previously did.

On April 7, the President of the United States posted the following on Truth Social, directed at the people of Iran ahead of a military deadline he had personally set: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” He added, unprompted: “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

This was not diplomatic back-channel pressure. It was a public declaration, by the commander of the most powerful military on earth, that he intended to destroy the power plants, bridges, and water infrastructure of a nation of 90 million people — men, women, and children with no vote in their government’s decisions — unless a geopolitical demand was met by an arbitrary deadline. Amnesty International’s secretary general stated the comments “may constitute a threat to commit genocide.” Legal experts at NPR, the Associated Press, and multiple international law institutions confirmed that the strikes threatened would constitute war crimes under both international and United States law. France’s Foreign Minister said targeting civilian infrastructure is “barred by the rules of war.” The United Nations Secretary-General issued the same warning. When asked by reporters whether he was concerned about committing war crimes, the President said he was “not at all” concerned.

A two-week ceasefire now exists. I want to be precise about how it got here: it was brokered publicly by Pakistan, and nudged across the finish line by China, which worked the Iranian side quietly — Foreign Minister Wang Yi made 26 phone calls to parties across the region, and Iranian officials confirmed that Supreme Leader Khamenei approved the ceasefire after a last-minute push from Beijing. Not by the United States Congress. Not by the branch of government our founders designed, with specific and deliberate intent, to prevent any single person from holding unchecked authority over acts of this magnitude. The Senate was largely silent. Republican leadership offered almost nothing. The firewall held — but it was held by Islamabad and Beijing, not Washington.

I have served under the chain of command. I understand that military action involves decisions made at levels above public view, and I respect that. What I do not respect, and what I will not quietly accept, is the abdication of institutional responsibility by the people I elected to provide oversight. The War Powers Act exists. The power of the purse exists. The power of public condemnation by elected officials exists. None of these tools were meaningfully deployed while a sitting president threatened to annihilate a civilization on a Tuesday morning deadline.

Two weeks is not a resolution. It is borrowed time. The conditions that produced the threat have not changed. The precedent that was set — that one man can make this threat, face no institutional check from his own government, and then walk it back on his own schedule — that precedent stands unless Congress acts to challenge it during this window.

I have written to every representative I have. Local. State. Federal. I have asked Rep. Emily Randall, Senators Murray and Cantwell, Majority Leader Thune, Minority Leader Schumer, and every other elected official on my list to use these two weeks. Invoke the War Powers Act. Hold hearings. Pass legislation that makes clear the targeting of civilian infrastructure is off the table — not as a preference, but as law. Make the silence mean something by filling it with action now.

I did not serve three combat tours so that one man could threaten to erase 90 million people and face no consequence from the government I fought to protect. I served because I believed in the system. The system has two weeks to demonstrate it believes in itself.

I am a veteran and a resident of Bainbridge Island. I am watching. So is history.

Brian McCoy is a Bainbridge Island resident and Air Force veteran who served three combat tours in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan.