MY TURN-The last war that the United States fought was World War II. I say this because according to our constitution, wars have to be declared by Congress and not by the president and the executive branch of government. How many Americans do you think know this?
Our Founding Fathers gave the actual war power to the Congress, because they wanted something with the unequaled long term consequences of going to war to be determined by the most numerous branch of our government in our representative democracy.
On the other hand, to protect this country from a threat of imminent danger, the president was made commander-in-chief with the power to immediately mobilize and order the military into action without first getting permission from Congress, since such an imminent threat in theory offered no such time to do so.
After subsequent predicable erosion by the president of the war powers with police actions in Korea and Vietnam, Congress belatedly found it necessary to attempt to restrict the president and executive branch's end run around Congressional power to make war by requiring that the president come to Congress within 90 days to seek their authorization for having committed American troops anywhere in the world.
However, with continued "police actions" in Granada, Central America, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere over the last 73 years since Congress was last asked to declare war, it has become perfectly clear that once a president has committed American troops anywhere around the world for any reason, Congress is loathe to not support such action with funding and a complete unwillingness to assert its exclusive authority to declare or not declare war for fear of a backlash from the voters.
But let's face it. It's not just Congress that refuses to fulfill its function to determine whether this country should take the extreme action of declaring war or not, it is also the American people, whatever their political stripe, that continue to blindly support any action the imperial presidency chooses to take in making war, whether or not a more dispassionate examination by Congress as envisioned by our Founding Fathers might have come up with a different less violent alternatives.
In looking at the resurgent violence in Iraq, since we withdrew our troops, it is hard to see what value this trillion dollar plus war- declared or now- accomplished. But for those who made the ultimate sacrifice of their lives and limbs and sanity, it is probably too much to ask them to take cognizance of the fact that these police actions only benefited Haliburton and the other military contractors who have gotten rich in this ill-conceived and patently illegal process that nobody seems willing to confront once their are boots on the ground.
Whether it is Iraq or Afghanistan, I think it is a very small minority of Americans who can come up with any rationalization as to why we went to these countries in the first place. And I would think that the most prevailing real motive for Iraq might just be the high quality of their untapped crude oil reserves, which should not be a justification to squander American lives in furtherance of corporate financial advantage.
When it comes to Afghanistan, I am still at a loss after reading extensively on the subject as to why we are in a place that arguably lead to the fall of the Soviet Union before us. Did we really have an expectation that we could do better than the Russians or somehow advance our geopolitical agenda for succeeding where the Soviets had failed before us?
The principal judgment at the Nuremberg imposed by the Allies after the end of World War II was that there comes a time when the common soldier needs to civilly disobey against illegal actions taken by their government, when those actions amount to crimes against the populations they are warring against and crimes against their own country's legal system.
Alas, the majority of people are born on the wrong side of the bell curve without the ability to meaningfully question authority that nonetheless remains their primary function in a putative democracy.
Is this just an insoluble problem with any form of government that relies on we the people or do you see another approach where both law and patriotism can be reconciled?
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 43
Pub: May 27, 2014
