The decision of Congress to override the veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act is a vote of no confidence in President Obama in respect of the global war on Islamic terror. It means that the vast majority of the senators and congressmen lack confidence that the administration will deal adequately with Saudi Arabia and other countries whose citizens have killed or injured Americans. Congress may not be ready in such cases to declare formally that a state of war exists. But it is prepared to let the victims of 9/11 and other terror attacks seek redress in American courts.

It’s no small thing that the Congress has done this. It’s not just the doves, after all, who have been opposing this law, which in certain cases would strip away the centuries-old protection sovereign states enjoy from civil lawsuits. Some of the most distinguished hawks in our history have been opposing this bill. They include Attorney General Mukasey and Ambassador Bolton; the duo warned just this month in the Wall Street Journal that Jasta is “far more likely to harm the United States than bring justice against any sponsor of terrorism.”

Nor is it hard to comprehend about what they’re worried. One can imagine retaliatory lawsuits being filed in every jerkwater foreign jurisdiction against the United States (or, once the concept gets going, Israel). One can imagine innocent countries being dragged through American courts. One can imagine these kinds of suits poisoning our bi- and multi-lateral relations. Our own view – we’ve been arguing it for years in this space and elsewhere – is that lawsuits, like diplomacy, should be used only as a last resort, after military action has failed.

What, though, is a Yank to do when the government has shrunk from action? The editors who conduct these columns have been writing about this problem since the 1990s, when Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which also stripped sovereign immunity from civil suits in certain cases. We’ve wished the best to such litigants as Brothers to the Rescue, who sued communist Cuba after their pilots were shot down and killed, and the Estate of Alisa Flatow, which sued Iran after Alisa was slain in an Iranian launched bus-bombing in Israel.

Suggestions that Congress lacks the power to lift sovereign immunity we have found unconvincing. Congress, after all, has the power to declare war, pursuant to which we could destroy a foreign country. It has the almost as awesome power to grant letters of marque and reprisal, which are, in effect, licenses to private parties to conduct acts of war (think the ship owners authorized to deal with the Barbary Pirates). So why wouldn’t it have the power, if it got its back up, to say that a country will have to face the brunt of that most barbaric of armies, the tort law bar?

Even if one stipulates that Congress has the power to pass a law like Jasta, is it smart? Jasta, warn Messrs. Bolton and Mukasey, “shifts authority for a huge component of national security from the politically accountable branches — the president and Congress — to the judiciary, the branch least competent to deal with international matters of life and death and least politically accountable.” The Wall Street Journal calls both the Democrats and Republicans behind this bill “dime store Metternichs.” It’s an wonderful and apt phrase. We blame Mr. Obama, whose administration is shipping hundreds of millions of dollars in high-denomination cash to, in Iran, the top terrorism exporting nation in the world. The executive branch doesn’t look so all-fired competent to us.