Antiwar.com Original Last weekend, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ordered the U.S. military to bomb targets in Syria and Iraq in an effort "to send a clear and unambiguous deterrent message" to Iran. It is apparently the belief of the Biden administration – as it has been with Biden’s three immediate presidential predecessors – that the US has the moral and legal authority to destroy any target outside the US with financial or political or military ties to Iran. Morally, the US can only use force defensively or to repel an imminent attack. When asked for the legal authority for an offensive attack, a Pentagon spokesperson