In his speech at the Democratic national convention, Khizr Khan asked if Donald Trump had read the Constitution. That question raises a related question, one that arises within the context of the US government's war on Iraq: What difference does it make whether Trump or anyone else has read the Constitution when the president and the national-security state branch of the federal government don't comply with it anyway and the federal judiciary doesn't enforce it against them?

The Constitution is the higher law that the American people have enacted that controls the actions of federal officials, including those in the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and other parts of the national-security state branch of the federal government. When it called the federal government into existence, it set forth the powers it would be permitted to exercise. The Constitution tells the federal government what it can and cannot do.

The Constitution is clear on the matter of war: The president, the Pentagon, and the CIA are prohibited from waging war without a declaration of war from Congress.

There was never a congressional declaration of war against Iraq. That's important because it means that the US government's war on Iraq was illegal under our form of government.

Interventionists, including those who defended the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, respond by saying that no president has complied with that provision of the Constitution since the advent of the national-security branch of the federal government in the late 1940s. There was no declaration of war in the Korean War, they point out. Same with the Vietnam War. Same with the invasion of Panama. And Grenada. And Afghanistan. And Iraq. And many others.

But simply because a constitutional provision isn't being followed and isn't being enforced by the federal judiciary doesn't mean it's nullified. It simply means that the higher law is being repeatedly violated by federal officials. The Constitution does not permit prior violations of the law to be used to ratify more violations of the law.