While claiming that he just needs a “limited” war against Syria to back up his “red line” threat, President Barack Obama is actually seeking a far broader mandate from Congress. The authorization would allow Obama to take any action that he “determines to be necessary and appropriate in connection with the use of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in the conflict in Syria” as well as acting to “prevent or deter the use or proliferation” of the weapons or to “protect the United States and its allies and partners” from the weapons.”
Indeed, it reminds one of the authorization leading into Iraq with only the 9-11 angle replaced by a chemical weapons rationale. The Iraq Resolution or the Iraq War Resolution (formally the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002), stated “That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
Now replace the terrorist attacks with the chemical attacks and you have our latest blank check demanded by a President. The language accomplishes two things. It allows members to claim that they merely wanted to protect the nation while making it unnecessary for the President to ask them again (and expose them to difficult votes). This is how politicians like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry voted to allow the Iraq War. While they later claimed that they had no idea and were misled, they ignored critics at the time questioning the evidence and objecting to the blank check language of the authorization. They also took no action later as the war killed thousands of U.S. personnel and spent hundreds of billions.
Nevertheless, democrats like Nancy Pelosi are demanding action and once again absolute (and blind) loyalty to Obama. The speech for Obama in the final vote has already been written (with a few modest edits):
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our [] dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
. . .
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. . . .
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for [Barry], [America], and Saint George!’
seen this?
http://hslda.org/hs/international/Germany/201308300.asp?src=slide&slide=Wunderlich_map_Aug_30_2013&pos=1
Children Seized in Shocking Raid
At 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, August 29, 2013, in what has been called a “brutal and vicious act,” a team of 20 social workers, police officers, and special agents stormed a homeschooling family’s residence near Darmstadt, Germany, forcibly removing all four of the family’s children (ages 7-14). The sole grounds for removal were that the parents, Dirk and Petra Wunderlich, continued to homeschool their children in defiance of a German ban on home education.
The children were taken to unknown locations. Officials ominously promised the parents that they would not be seeing their children “anytime soon.”
HSLDA obtained and translated the court documents that authorized this use of force to seize the children. The only legal grounds for removal were the family’s continuation of homeschooling their children. The papers contain no other allegations of abuse or neglect. Moreover, Germany has not even alleged educational neglect for failing to provide an adequate education. The law ignores the educational progress of the child; attendance—and not learning—is the object of the German law.
Judge Koenig, a Darmstadt family court judge, signed the order on August 28 authorizing the immediate seizure of Dirk and Petra Wunderlich’s children. Citing the parents’ failure to cooperate “with the authorities to send the children to school,” the judge also authorized the use of force “against the children” if necessary, reasoning that such force might be required because the children had “adopted the parents’ opinions” regarding homeschooling and that “no cooperation could be expected” from either the parents or the children.
LK,
As someone once said in Germany, “That’s a nice Reichstag you’ve got there. Be a shame if something were to happen to it. Say it were to . . . catch on fire?”
What we need is a full blown constitutional crisis. If the President -any President, calls on Congress to authorize force and Congress says “no” and The President proceeds anyway that needs to be addressed using whatever mechanisms the Constitution sets out. That the President has essentially stated that he seek approval as more of a courtesy than substantial recognition of Congressional authority would sure be making me angry as a congressperson. Congress should just say “no” to force the issue.
GMason: (Obama is a tyrant.) back at comment #1 I don’t disagree regarding the security state or the unitary Executive, but I don’t think President Obama is any/much more of a tyrant than President Bush was. It’s simply a steady creep of assumed authority. And why not? It’s not as if anyone is effectively challenging it, Congress seems eager to foster it. The Executive has been assuming more and more power in security matters (wars, spying, etc) since Vietnam and it’s not going to stop until there’s a direct confrontation over it. Having said that I have no assurance that the Executive wouldn’t prevail.
I don’t have much hope that it will happen, I’m still of the mind that there’s only one political party in the US and all of our politicians are just paid lackeys, but I’d like to see the dispute happen. It would be good to see if we have a king or a constitutional form of government.
Unless I missed something, the United States Senate has never ratified a treaty of alliance with either Saudi Arabia or the Apartheid Zionist Entity. So where does President Obama get off calling these two parasites “allies.” And since Saudi Arabia and the A.Z.E. have more than enough money and weapons to protect themselves from Syrian gas, why don’t these “allies” do some of that “ally” thing and do the warring so that the United States doesn’t have to. I mean, why would anyone need an ally who never does anything to take the load upon themselves once in a while?
No. I don’t think that the U.S. has any “allies” in Saudi Arabia or the A.Z.E.. Not in law and not in fact. Parasites, yes. Allies, no. So President Obama needs to knock off the bullshit about our erstwhile — if not “stalwart” — “allies” who can do whatever they want to avoid breathing Syrian gas if only they would stop shipping it to Al Qaeda in Syria in the first place.
McCain is probably the last person who should be talking about credibility out in public. Except maybe Box Turtle McConnell. And John the Orange.
Obama used the phrase “weapons of mass destruction”? Why use a phrase which everyone associates with the fraudulent war in Iraq?
“WMD” is a sad, sick joke.
Like “hearts and minds.”
I don’t often find myself in agreement with former Republican Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, but
here he offers a superb synopsis of the critical issues at stake. One really good excerpt:
This is McCains quote to the press today after speaking with Obama.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama-summons-mccain-bid-allies-syria-strike/story?id=20135431
“”If the Congress were to reject a resolution like this after the President of the United States has already committed to action, the consequences would be catastrophic in that the credibility of this country, with friends and adversaries alike, would be shredded and there would be not only implications for this presidency, but for future presidencies as well,” McCain told reporters shortly after meeting with the president in the Oval Office.
….. the consequences would be catastrophic in that the credibility of this country…..
Good ole John McCain, he’s got a hammer in his pants and every time he sees a nail his blood gets pumping. Wham Bam Bomb Iran, er Iraq, eh Syria.
,
And let us not forget that little legal thing:
“Unfortunately, the president’s draft (authorization) states a violation of international law in every line,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a University of Notre Dame law professor. “Resort to military force is not permitted to punish the use of banned weapons; to address arms proliferation, or to respond to vague threats to the United States.”
“National self-defense or actions explicitly authorized by the United Nations’ Security Council are the only two kinds of military action acceptable under international law, O’Connell explained.”
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/01/201002/obamas-proposal-seeks-broad-war.html#.UiX4Qn89blc
And since the U.N. treaty forms part of U.S. law, any war of aggression against Syria violates U.S. law as well.
President Obama does not wish for Congress to save him from committing a war crime under U.S. and international law but only to join him in committing it. Misery may love company, but it makes an absurd basis for a constitutional republic.
“In Oceania there is no law” (national or international)
As a purely repugnant fact about the known conduct of the Obama administration, Congress should bear in mind that no matter what Congress authorizes him to do, once President Obama starts his bombing of Syria, he will quickly disregard whatever he said to gain “limited” authorization for war and will “un-limit” his prosecution of it. President Obama’s duplicitous behavior in Libya provides the salutary warning example here. Give him any way to start a war and he will expand it once started. See his bone-headed “surge” — i.e., mission creep escalation — in Afghanistan (and into Pakistan and Yemen), as well. America still hasn’t recovered from that McCain-demanded bungle.
President Obama said two years ago that “Assad must go.” So the policy of the Obama administration has always been regime change in Syria. Saying now that he only wishes to bash Assad “a little bit,” just to send some sort of smoke-signal “message,” flies in the face of how the world has seen him operate in Libya and Afghanistan (and Pakistan and Yemen). First he claims a limited objective, and then he goes for regime change or some other unannounced goal — like permanent military bases and “trainers,” etc. — once the shooting starts.
So the Congress and the American people simply cannot take President Obama at his word.on the subject of war. His own words and actions have forfeited any such claim to credibility. Chronic lying does not build confidence, no matter what Presidents Bush and Obama claim to the contrary.
The U.S. Congress — if it has any standing left as a co-equal branch of government — needs only to demand of President Obama: “What part of ‘NO’ do you not understand?”
Robin, I hope today was a good day, and that tomorrow is better.
“Now more than ever it became essential to protect Americans from thinking that that the best way to avoid wars was to stay out of them.” — Andrew Bacevich, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War (2010)
President Obama has said that he will accept Congressional approval or an aggressive war of choice against Syria but will ignore a refusal of Congressional permission. In other words, he will have his war on Syria or he will have it. Congress can choose to take those marching orders or take them. The “government” of the United States “at work.”
Congress has no need to meet only to say “yes” to what President Obama says he has already decided. If Congress does not intend to issue a resounding “no” to the Imperial Presidency, then it has no reason to meet at all.
Doesn’t the U.S. Congress need to repeal the existing A.U.M.F. that declares Al Qaeda America’s enemy before it can pass a new law declaring Al Qaeda America’s friend? It seems to me that a legal blog such as this would find that question of supreme importance, because upon the resolution of it hangs the Constitution’s literal definition of treason. I raise this issue for our Congress to debate and decide because, as ex-Congressman Dennis Kucinich said recently:
“Bombing Asad makes America Al Qaeda’s air force.”
Clearly, if waging a war against the Syrian regime gives material aid and comfort (not to mention training, weapons, and funding) to the Al Qaeda forces seeking to overthrow the Syrian regime, then any law advocating such a policy, by definition, makes any American official who advocates it guilty of treason. Literally.
Yet I can already hear President Obama’s Orwellian reply:
“Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Oceania has never been an ally of Eastasia.”
Much recent bloody history says otherwise.
Reblogged this on veritasusa and commented:
Yet again, American dollars, American lives, American honor for a cause where there is no clearly defined and articulated American national security interest, no American lives at stake, and is yet another adventure into the endless quagmire of the Middle East, which has been hopelessly entangling Western powers in its endless wars for hundreds of years (if not since the Crusades). It is folly, sheer folly, to think that this will have any sort of predictable outcome. Whatever it actually is, it will NOT be what we expected, that is assured. Yet here we go again, another man in the Oval Office thinks that the only way to manage the greatest power in the world is to use that power at almost every turn, it is so very seductive. But truly, the wisest men understand that it is with such great power that comes an even greater responsibility to be ever more selective and restrained in its use – using it very rarely. That is one sign of a wise and truly great leader.
We Are going into Syria to bolster Obama’s credibility not the US. McCain wants to go into Syria because he want to show he is still a man. What worthless excuses these guys are for leaders. Congress must fulfill its Oath of office. It must vote NO on this adventure.
Sorry Nonny,
Meant to say, “… Not forget WHY Article I comes before Article II.”
War has been Outlawed
http://youtu.be/jo87Q1Y48ws
Nonny,
Let us also not forget Article I comes before Article II…
Evidently, the congress has never voted against a request for war.
It is the oath of fealty carried over from the feudal DNA:
(American Feudalism – 3).
“again absolute (and blind) loyalty”
Yeah right. Because if she agrees with him, it might be “absolute” and “blind” loyalty. Not seeing it, especially with Sen. Leahy speaking out for a limits on the authorization.