I’m lucky enough to know people in Iran who yearn for freedom. A few years ago, I sat across from a woman in Tehran who told me that was all she wanted for her daughter: freedom. Their family, like many in Iran, dream of peace, prosperity and the chance to live without fear.

The regime in Iran has instead delivered the people it rules oppression and isolation, using its resources to spread terror at home and abroad. For that reason, I’m not sorry that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many of his top-level allies are now no longer with us.

But I worry that President Trump’s decision to start killing foreign leaders and bombing faraway lands is rash and bad policy. I fear it represents yet another step toward authoritarian rule here in the United States.

So far, Trump hasn’t made the case for war. He hasn’t bothered to lay out his rationale for what he’s doing in any coherent way. No speech to the nation. No explanation in any format of what we’re trying to do or how we will know when the fighting is over.

As Sen. Angus King put it, “Why now? What is the purpose of this?”

Our country, King told Maine reporters recently, doesn’t give the president the power to take us to war.

“This is a fundamental responsibility of the Congress,” he said. “Does the Constitution mean anything? That’s what this is all about.”

Americans ought to follow the course laid out in our Constitution, which gives Congress the power to declare war, not the president. If we are to fight a war, Congress needs to endorse it and then, ideally, help the president win it.

Sen. Susan Collins, Maine’s senior senator, has yet to fret in public about the role of Capitol Hill but she did say that “sustained combat operations require full engagement with Congress.”

Trump has called for a new regime in Iran. He also hasn’t said how that could happen.

In the same remarks to the press, King expressed skepticism that the Iranian people will be able to rise up and take control from the nearly 1 million armed men who work for the regime.

History suggests that dropping bombs isn’t going to oust those in control of Iran. That outcome requires troops on the ground, an approach the U.S. took  in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan in recent decades, with mixed success.

If that’s the goal, King said, the United States may find itself in a “problematic, destructive and long-standing” war.

I think he’s right. It’s hard to feel any optimism.

The Republican-controlled Congress hasn’t shown the slightest sign of life since Trump took office. Instead of fiercely guarding its prerogatives under the Constitution, it rolls over like a lazy old cat.

Trump has taken it upon himself to shutter federal agencies created and funded by Congress, rip down part of the White House, close the Kennedy Center and remove signs at national parks, and there are many other stunning examples of contempt for our elected representatives, who sit on the sidelines as if they had no power to do anything.

This is where Congress needs to draw the line. If a president can take us into a costly and potentially endless war without approval from Congress, he can do anything he wants.

While Iranians may have a tough time gaining the liberty they crave, we had damn well better start protecting ours.

None of this is about Iran, really. It’s about us.