Perpetual War

[KeithE]

.

Unconscionable as well as Unconstitutional. Perhaps the Senate will vote differently or Obama will veto it. Call, write, email your Senator if you oppose this (and I would hope ya'll oppose this).

[Jim]

A National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is passed every year and signed by the president. It has mostly to do with the budget. Obama has signed two of them.

[KeithE]

[Tim Bonney]

I don't know what the big deal is about this one Keith. As has been pointed out, this is a routine bill past annually.

[Jim]

An amendment to NDAA (of which there always seems to be a multitude attempted) passed 26 May by a vote of 322 to 96 the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which contained amendments striking at progress made toward repeal of DADT (“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell),” according to LGBT web-site. As far as the war-making-anywhere thing is concerned, the prez already has that power – or at least thinks he does – as shown by the totally unwarranted attack by Obama on Libya in March, a nation that couldn’t threaten the Boy Scouts in this country. The prez has already signed the extension of the Patriot Act stuff that he has been against all along. He also keeps Gitmo in place and GIs in Afghanistan, the better to have them blown up frequently by the brainwashed illiterates who’ve been taught that killing infidels is next to godliness. The Senate will nullify much of the act, something totally expected, so what else is new?

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

[Jim]

Nothing Obama does makes any sense in most areas. It seemed to never occur to him with respect to Libya that he would have profited from consulting Congress. He probably wouldn’t have received authorization if he had, so that’s more likely the reason since he couldn’t be dumb enough, surely, not to know what he should have done. He’s a globalist, a one-worlder, so he sees the UN as his point of reference for anything he does internationally. The Congress, to him, is just a thorn in his side, a collective party-hack, at least until now, to do his bidding. He considers NATO his personal police force. His boorish conduct toward the British and his silly ingratiation of himself to the French is indicative of his shallowness. His throwing of Israel under the bus to join Jeremiah “the bullfrog” Wright is an example of his duplicity/treachery. The gates between Gaza and Egypt (the Sinai) were thrown open yesterday, so now the war materiel can be delivered easily above ground instead of through the time-consuming tunnel systems already in place. Mubarak kept the gates closed except occasionally for medicine, etc. More rockets for Israeli schools and restaurants will be the result. Apparently, he does understand that he knows virtually nothing about national security so he has continued the perfectly reasonable requirements of the Patriot Act. So far, since the many years since its inception, no citizen has come forward to complain about the FBI infringing in any way upon his privacy. He has no conception of his responsibilities under the War Powers Act of 1973, which every president since then has honored, with all time limits satisfied, especially. His total weakness is matched only by that of Congress, a do-nothing collection of dreamers and opportunists.

[Tim Bonney]

[KeithE]

[Jim]

Lest we forget especially on this day those who took seriously the words of Jesus in Luke 22:35,36 and made it stick.

THE TRENCHES OF THE DEAD

He had the look of death in his eye,
His uniform soaked in blood,
He wandered in under cloudless sky,
But his boots were caked with mud.
He had the look of the faraway -
He saw nothing close at hand -
He seemed to gaze at another day
In a distant, distant land.
And when asked from where, he did not speak,
But his gaze transcended Now,
With a visage never cold, but bleak,
And deep furrows in his brow.
A horror-filled scene there seemed to play
For inward eyes yet to face -
A gory vision…some future day?
Or a known and deadly place?
He staggered then, but he made no sound,
And he never lost that look
As he slowly drifted to the ground,
Twenty eons, yes, it took -
Twenty eons worth of fear-filled eyes?
Twenty eons in a day?
No matter, though, if a sky or skies,
Weary eyes seemed to portray.
Looking up, he seemed to see us then,
From his cold and final bed -
And he whispered softly, softly then -
"From the trenches of the dead."

[Dave Roberts]

Maybe I'm fuzzy on this one, but where is the declaration of war for Iraq and where is the declaration for Afghanistan? I can't seem to recall Congress declaring war in either event. Then was the Vietnam War ever declared or just buttressed on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution? It seems we may be lacking in several declarations of war.

In 1984, George Orwell spoke about perpetual war as the way to keep the people placated and behind the government. I wonder how right Orwell may have been. We seem to have a repeated list of them.

[Jim]

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution:“The Congress shall have power…to declare war…to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.”
Article 2, Section 2: "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States and of the Militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States,…” The president is given the specific power to conduct the military operation if Congress declares or otherwise (under the laws) mandates military action.

It seems clear enough constitutionally that the president carries out the enactments/resolutions of the Congress but does not make policy decisions regarding armed conflict and certainly does not make war as his prerogative, which is precisely what Obama did regarding Libya. Indeed, if insurrections and invasions were to be included as those happening in other nations (Libya, for instance), according to the constitution he would have been required to act in behalf of Qaddafi, not against him.

This military meddling in other nations’ affairs is not the requirement or allowance of the Constitution, of course, but does emphasize when the Congress/president can instigate or carry out military action regarding this nation, i.e., to put down insurrections and/or invasions, as, for instance, in the case of the Confederacy in 1861 or the Barbary pirates off the coast of Libya in the early 1800s, when the buccaneers “invaded” American ships.

Libya obviously did not invade or otherwise violate this country in March; therefore, according to the Constitution, neither the Congress nor the president had any right to bomb sovereign territory and murder Libyans, an absolute act of war, exactly like the action of the Japanese on 07 December 1941 at Pearl Harbor, which did result in war being declared by the Congress, not the president, who then conducted the war. In his action, Obama became a Hirohito, not a Roosevelt, not an attractive comparison.

If the main premise for Obama’s virtually unilateral action has to do with humanitarian considerations, as seems to be the case, this country/president, even if constitutionally allowed, would need a military of many millions to handle the whole world, especially the Middle East and Africa (particularly in Muslim-controlled countries), in order to protect the many populations affected.

For the Afghan and Iraqi wars, check the War Powers Act of 1973. An argument could be made that hostilities were called for, but in the case of Afghanistan there was no country to fight, just al Qaeda as sponsored by the Taliban, actually or at least protected/sponsored by the Afghan government. There should have been a declaration of war in both cases. Vietnam and Korea were hard propositions because there were no actual nations to fight, just communism. In all cases except Libya, Congress was consulted and gave approval.

[Haruo]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Haruo]

Thanks, Ed. While I'd seen the title, I knew basically nothing of the Bergamini book, and it's quite possible that he's correct in his general conclusions. My apologies to Jim for jumping in with my pre-Bergamini, Macarthur-manipulated received wisdom.

Haruo

[Chris]

[Jim]

[Sandy]

The action against Libya is a NATO action, and the President consulted congress first. Of course, the GOP doesn't really know how to handle this situation, they want to blow any Muslim leader and nation off the map, but they aren't sure of the PR and political value of such a move. The President is within his authority under the War Powers Act. I don't know if there is any more US interest in this action than there was in Iraq the second time around, after Bush had to lie and lie again about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's intention to use them, both of which were fictional, but when party affiliation is involved, at least for Jim, Republicans can do no wrong and Democrats can do no right. Bush lied. Obama didn't.

[Jim]

[Sandy]

[Dave Roberts]

In naming military actions for our country, no one mentioned the intrusion into Panama. More to add to the list of perpetual wars.

[Jim]

[Jim]

[Chris]