...In 1998, President Bill Clinton launched a missile strike against Sudan after US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by terrorists. The US government never produced any evidence linking the targets in Sudan to the terrorist attacks. The owners of the El-Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries plant—the largest pharmaceutical factory in East Africa—sued for compensation after Clinton’s attack demolished their facility. Eleven years later, a federal appeals court dismissed the case: “President Clinton, in his capacity as commander in chief, fired missiles at a target of his choosing to pursue a military objective he had determined was in the national interest. Under the Constitution, this decision is immune from judicial review.” Determinations based on secret (often false) information legally absolved presidents of any killings or calamities abroad.

In 1999, former president Clinton attacked Serbia, killing up to fifteen hundred Serb civilians in a seventy-eight-day North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombing campaign. Serbia had done nothing to the United States, but defense secretary William Cohen justified the bombing as “a fight for justice over genocide.” After the bombing ended, no evidence of genocide was found. Many of the Serbs remaining in Kosovo were slaughtered and their churches burned to the ground. Clinton’s attack brought on the takeover of Kosovo by a vicious terrorist clique that was condemned by the European Union in 2014 for murdering Serbs and selling their kidneys, livers, and other body parts.

Thirty-one congressmen sued Clinton for violating the War Powers Act by attacking Serbia. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit after deciding that the congressmen did not have legal standing to sue.

Last year, former president George W. Bush gave a speech vehemently condemning the “decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.” Bush had blundered in a speech condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He realized his mistake, mentioned Vladimir Putin, then added, “But Iraq, too.” The audience at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas laughed. The humor was lost on the families of four thousand American servicemen and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who perished in the conflict....

...Thomas Jefferson warned in 1798, “In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” One of the best ways to make the Constitution binding is to cease blocking lawsuits against presidents for trampling Americans’ rights or inflicting carnage around the globe. But don’t expect either Republicans or Democrats to embrace that fix any time soon.