Jimmy (and Hussle),
I appreciate your email. Let me explain what I mean by the wars are illegal so you don't think I'm being "too extreme" in my calling of the Iraq war illegal.
Warning, this is long, but its not (hopefully) offensive, so no blood should boil in reading this response when compared to my earlier ones. More on policy than anything else.
I'm just going to make an apology right at the beginning, though. I want this to be a discussion and I apologize for causing in others or responding to others in an emotional, visceral or insulting way. I love you guys, respect the hell out of you, and -believe it or not- am not trying to piss you off. So, i'm going to be more cautious in my approach. Maybe I should just post this on a blog and not on email so longer submissions can be made and read by people here who care. Email really does suck for stuff like this. In fact, we should be arguing over some beers. My motivation is simply this, I want to be consistently pro-life across the board and America's 75 years of interventionism abroad (and at home) I believe is inconsistent with an ethic of life, with the rule of law, and with the US Constitution. Here's my argument below.
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US Constitution and the Legality of War: Iraq does not meet US Constitutional requirements
The US Constitution and the framers purposefully removed from the Executive the power to declare war. They saw it as a dangerous power to put in the hands of one person, especially since that one person had command of the military in times of war. What they did was put War Powers in the hands of Congress, so that our representatives would be the ones who declared war and also held the power of the purse to fund the war, in case the President wasn't doing his job as Commander in Chief correctly. This is supposed to mean that the People, through their representatives, have the say-so over the war, not one man with kinglike authority as in the British system. This is a cornerstone of the Constitution's separation of powers. As Madison wrote to Jefferson,
"The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature."
The Constitution makes it abundantly clear that War Powers belong to the Legislature alone and they are to declare war in order to engage our troops. In the Federalist Papers, #69, Hamilton explains that the Executive is only nominally like the British King in war powers,
"but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the DECLARING of war to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all of which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature." (capitalization was in the original)
The president is merely the first general and generals do not get to declare war in a Democratic Republic. Ever. That would, de facto make it a dictatorship. Lincoln once said in a debate with a gentleman (unknown to me) who wanted all of the war powers to be invested in the President and not the legislature:
The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.
Congress, however, as we all know, does not give a crap about the Constitution nor in following it (hence Obamacare). The interesting thing is, though, that in regards to War Powers Congress abdicated its responsibility. Congress, in the past 75 years, has not reigned in the encroaching power of the Executive according to the Constitution. Korea and Vietnam were disasters and were also the first full scale wars the President engaged in without approval by Congress (the first large engagement with a foreign government was with China in 1900 by President McKinley sending 5,000 troops against the government-backed Boxer rebellion). In 1973 Congress tried to curb this trend after the Vietnam disaster with the War Powers Resolution, but it had not the desired effect and really only increased presidential war power.
What Congress has done and continues to do, being a bunch of weaklings who avoid responsibility for their rule, is to give up the Constitution for the sake of political expediency, as historian Arthur Schlesinger describes the erosion of Congressional war powers was "as much a matter of congressional acquiescence as presidential usurpation."
They pass meaningless (constitutionally) resolutions in compliance with UN authorization and not our own Constitution that authorize the President to "use whatever force necessary". This is extremely dangerous language and practice for America because it means that influences other than the will of the people can cause our troops to be deployed indefinitely overseas at the whim of the President, which I believe is an immoral tyranny that destroys the lives of our troops needlessly. As Lincoln said,
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure…
and again later:
Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us" but he will say to you "be silent; I see it, if you don’t."
It also causes the exact thing that the Constitution, as well as all conservatives in theory should hate: the expansion of government, and that expansion residing in the Executive branch alone. For example: If the President is a globalist progressive like Bill Clinton, then our troops will be sent here and there on supposed humanitarian military missions. None of which is integral for our national security because none of those wars involved acts of aggression against the US, soil or citizens, and resulting in spilling blood and wasting money. One cannot call themselves "Pro-Soldier" who is fine with putting them in harms way illegally and immorally time and time again. I oppose this completely.
Danger of Going to War without Declaring War
The further danger by allowing the Executive to engage our troops in war without calling it war or treating it like war, but having it really be war, is that everything, especially the definition of victory, is vague, shifting and unfocused and the perimeters of combat are equally shaky. Thus, these authorizations for the use of force to bring about peace are precisely the things that increase the danger for our troops, because nothing is well defined, the support from the people at home is not unified, the mission remains shifting and the goals unclear. This causes not only mission creep, but mission redefinition, which is not how war ought to be conducted at all when people's lives are on the line. (I'm not talking about the prosecution of the war from a strategic/military perspective, but from a policy perspective when I say things like "how war ought to be conducted".)
Declarations of War are important. They have a specific function that we desperately need today and that is painfully missing. Declaring war changes things. First, all of Congress is forced to make an Up or Down vote on this monumental issue, which at least implies commitment by the people through their representatives to the war effort. Declaring war sharply defines the war itself, how it is carried out (not strategy, but purpose) and what the goals are. Declaring war also means that the President is fully vested with Commander-in-Chief powers with no vagaries in meaning, intention or goal.
Declarations of War are important also because it is up to our nation to fight our own wars. UN or NATO resolutions are not sufficient enough ever to command the US to engage her sons in battle. Clinton couldn't get a UN resolution for the invasion of Kosovo, so he got a NATO resolution, all without Congresses approval. We did not surrender our sovereign rights, powers and responsibilities by joining the UN or forming NATO, though often we have, especially since Clinton and George H.W. Bush. International agencies cannot commit our troops, only the people and our representatives can do this. Even the President cannot commit our troops, acting alone.
With Iraq there was no declaration of war on behalf of Congress, there was just the resolution to use force, which desperately shrouded itself with supposed legality by drawing on UN resolution 1441 condemning Iraq regarding earlier resolutions against Iraq left in place since Persian Gulf 1. Bush's speech, combined with the Congressional resolution for the use of force to keep peace in Iraq, became the President's cover- thin though it was- to engage the Iraqi people in full out war. (Despite the fact that many other nations have violated UN Resolutions without us declaring war against them, yet for Iraq, that is all we need.) This is illegal according to our Constitution. The framers placed restrictions against precisely this, of which our presidents and the legislative branches today either neglect or reject. Bush even further declared that the UN resolution combined with the Iraqi use of force resolution from Congress (not a declaration of war) even permitted him to full-scale invade Iran. This is big government power growing exponentially!
Some have said that since there is no formal way to declare war in the Constitution, a resolution for the use of force is enough. This, however, flies in the face of precedent in US history. The US Congress had before it an Act to Declare War, sponsored by a representative who opposed the war, but wanted at least for it to be Constitutional. Congress knew what they were doing. The arguments against the declaration of war were made because actually declaring war is too severe, too over-the-top, and ultimately, in the words of a real US Representative on the House floor debating the issue, Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution on War Powers "is anachronistic"! (from a Republican, no less.)
Merely by congress members regarding Article 1, Section 8 as anachronistic, they have alleviated from themselves the burden of Constitutionality. - here's an article about a debate at the progressive Wilson Center regarding Congress and the War Powers: Constitutional Anchor or Anachronism? The progressive view is that it is anachronistic because the modern world is different than the 18th century. Speaking for the Founders view of war powers and the 1973 War Powers Resolution that I briefly mentioned above: W.P.R. is a betrayal of the founders' intent because it gives the President 60 to 90 days to wage war anywhere, for any reason. 'It is an extremely dishonest resolution' (says this guy Fisher) and does not insure collective judgement."
Thus, you have a Congress that was fully aware of what it was doing - abdicating responsibility - in allowing the President to have full control of whether or not to go to war, whether or not to put our troops in harms way, whether or not to bomb a foreign country. They shot down the rule of law and the US Constitution. They have committed our troops to involvement in a whole series of foreign battles that have nothing to do with our national security (I understand that this point is arguable), in fact makes us weaker, because it ignores National Defense (border issues, etc) for the sake of an aggressive war 7,000 miles away.
This allowed the President to push phony justifications for war (WMDs) and then suddenly shifting the purpose for us being there, to depose Saddam who is a tyrant to his own people, i.e. a humanitarian mission. It was Bush in the 2000 presidential campaign against Algore who criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist. He said, quote: "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that."
Colin Powell, Bush's guy to push the war on the nation and the UN, left the office of the Secretary of State in 2005 for many reasons. One of those was because he became the mouthpiece of war against Iraq using intelligence that he would discover two years later was altogether false and that the administration knew the information was false when he presented it, thus putting a permanent "blot" on his reputation hereafter (and he should have known too).
As former CIA agent Ray McGovern put it about the WMDs and the Administrations knowledge of it from the last link:
In sum, the CIA had both the Iraqi foreign minister (Sabri) and the Iraqi intelligence chief (Habbush) "turned" and reporting to us in the months before the war (in Naji Sabri's case) and the weeks before your U.N. speech (in the case of Tahir Jalil Habbush). Both were part of Saddam Hussein's inner circle; both reported that there were no weapons of mass destruction. But this was not what the president wanted to hear, so Tenet (CIA Director) put the kibosh on Habbush and put Sabri on a cutter to Qatar.
Another dangerous reason why this war is illegal, I will let Senator Byrd (not a conservative) tell it:
"This nation is about to embark upon the first test of the revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of preemption – the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future – is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self-defense."
Sort of a Conclusion:
If, as I am alleging, the so-called War on Terror (it's a bad name because you cannot declare war on a tactic) that is conducted in Iraq is an illegal war, then, as a Catholic and a citizen, I must oppose it. Or, if you think it is the right and just thing- as anyone here may- then you must work to get it made legal by forcing congress to declare war on Iraq. Right now it is illegal and saying "that anachronistic" equals saying "the rule of law no longer matters. We are in the hands of the strong man now." (fascism)
We cannot take the Rush Limbaugh approach- as Jonathan and Brian can attest to (if they remember listening to him while playing Halo 3 at 1AM) - of which he said, "It doesn't matter how we got into the war now. That was the past. All that matters is that we finish the job now that we are here." With all due respect, I whole-heartedly disagree. If we entered illegally, then remaining here continues our illegality. One cannot do evil so that good may come. One cannot say the end justifies the means, especially when the "end" shifts like sand.
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I'm not a part of the blame-America-first crowd. Technically, and if we want to throw labels around, I'm a member of the "Defend America First" crowd. I think interventionism destroys America, and in those places where America engages in interventionism in foreign countries and blowback occurs from that intervention, I will blame America only in those instances because America would be in the wrong. For instance, deposing democratically elected leaders because they are not our puppets and imposing brutal dictatorships that are our puppets is immoral, illegal and needs to be confronted by Catholics. As Chesterton said, "My country- right or wrong, makes about as much sense as My mother- drunk or sober." I love America, that's why I want her to be good, not just strong. In fact, I'll give up the strength if it were to increase the goodness.
As a Republican form of government I have to question the US gov't, her leaders, and her Pentagon. That's what it means to be a responsible citizen.
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The next step we should ask is WHY DO THESE PEOPLE ENGAGE IN TERRORIST ACTIVITIES in the first place. If we do not get to these answers, if we do not understand their motivations to become terrorists, suicide bombers and the like, if we just say 'their evil and insane' and leave it at that, then we will never overcome terrorism because we will endlessly be treating the effects and not the causes of terrorism.
All of the evidence points to just one reason ('excuse' or 'justification' might be better than 'reason') for why people become so desperate that they become suicide terrorists.
gomer
AMDG
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