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The Congress and Afghanistan: Rubber-Stamping Yet Another War?
On August 7, 1964, the United States House of Representatives voted 416-0, and the U.S. Senate voted 88-2, to support President Lyndon Johnson's decision to bomb North Vietnam in response to the alleged attacks three days earlier on two U.S. war ships—the Maddox and Turner Joy—in the Gulf of Tonkin. The congressional resolution also authorized the "Commander in Chief to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." The nearly unanimous "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" marked the start of the U.S. commitment to large-scale U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.
On September 14, 2001, the House of Representatives voted 420-1, and the Senate voted 98-0, to authorize the president "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." This congressional authorization of the "war against terrorism" was signed by President Bush on September 18, 2001.
In October 2002, while stating that Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction posed a "threat to the national security of the United States," the House of Representatives voted 296-133, and the Senate voted 77-23, to authorize President Bush to use the armed forces of the United States "as he determines to be necessary and appropriate" in order "to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq." President Bush signed this de-facto congressional authorization to invade Iraq on October 16, 2002.
What is wrong, primarily, with this series of congressional authorizations is that the Congress failed in each instance to exercise a fundamental constitutional obligation to check—rather than rubber-stamp—the president's authority to take the country to war. Under the U.S. Constitution, the Congress has the power to declare war, while the president has authority to conduct war once declared. In modern practice, the Congress has simply consented to the president's wars, as reflected in the resolutions cited above, which the president then conducted with funds rubber-stamped (again) by Congress. The disasters of the U.S. wars in Indochina and Iraq, in addition to the unending war against terrorism, should speak for themselves as to the wisdom of Congress's abrogation of arguably its most important constitutional powers—the power to declare war and the power of the purse.
Like the Congress, the press also has self-annulled a key constitutional power. In the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, U.S. Supreme Court justice Hugo Black famously exhorted the press to be vigilant of the government's reasons for going to war: "Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell." With the exception of the New York Times' publication of excerpts and analysis of the Pentagon's secret history of the U.S. war in Indochina (the "Pentagon Papers"), elite news organizations have been far more inclined to publish the president's false show of facts as grounds for war, including reporting as fact President Johnson's false claim that the Maddox and Turner Joy were attacked by North Vietnam on August 4 in the Gulf of Tonkin, and President George W. Bush's unsubstantiated assertions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Likewise, since the beginning of the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union, the federal courts have been reluctant to check the growing war powers of the president, ruling in the clashes that have developed between the Congress and the president that a war powers dispute is a "political question" that should be resolved by the political branches of government, or that a clash wasn't "ripe" enough for the courts to intervene, given the relatively small numbers of congressional members suing the president.
In short, as things stand, the president is essentially unchecked by the Congress, the courts, and the press when he seeks to go to war. It further seems that the president's generals—who, as uniformed members of the military, have far too much access to TV and radio to lobby the American public on behalf of policies they support—have more power and influence than the Congress and the courts about when and where the United States should go to war.
Though one could argue that the nation's top generals seem far more responsible than the right-wing radicals that now dominate the Republican Party, it is nevertheless the case that the Democrats currently control both the House and Senate, should invoke Congress's constitutional authority to make decisions concerning war, and, beyond that, should deny funding for any request by President Obama to send additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
Doing so would have the support of an apparent majority of the American public, given the most recent poll results (CNN, September 1) which show that 57 percent oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The Democrats' refusal to fund more troops would also prevent President Obama from irreversibly escalating a war that (according to the CNN poll) is opposed by Democrats (75 percent) and Independents (57 percent) and supported only by Republicans (70 percent).
The Democrats in Congress should now oppose the war in Afghanistan, before any additional escalation, and, as Senator Russ Feingold suggested, require President Obama to set a timetable for withdrawal. This would not only ensure against any additional congressional complicity in yet another disastrous U.S. war in a far-off land, it would go a long way in taking back the decision to go to war from one elected official and his generals.
25 Comments so far
Show AllDuring the 2008 campaign, now-President Obama said many times that we had to get out of Iraq, which was the "wrong" war, and concentrate our efforts in Afganistan, the "right" war.
I hoped at the time he was just saying this so as to not appear to potential voters as a weakling peace wus, and that when he got into office he would quietly phase out the combat phase of the Afgan conflict. Even I, the Paranoid Pessimist, can fall prey to foolish hope. The fear of being "seen" as being "soft on terrorism" (which, until the reactivation of "socialism" as a boogyman during the health care debate, had taken the place of "Godless communism" on the U.S. public's psychological enemies list) is too powerful for anyone to buck, particularly someone like our president who seems to feel he has to bend over doubly backwards so he won't scare the public by appearing even for an instant to be an angry black man.
As with Vietnam (the war I was involved in, though I was nowhere near the shooting), the military is demanding more and more troops because they can't bear the shame of possibly losing. The war's goals and justifications keep changing, and the danger of dragging Pakistan's nukes into it increases with every unmanned drone bomb that hits a wedding reception or day care center. But if you think Obama's getting booed now over health care, what do you think the reaction would be if he announced an Afgan pull-out? To bad Henry Kissinger's quip during Vietnam that we should just "declare victory and go home" wouldn't work here.
Paranoid Pessimist
I think that you probably meant to say that it was former Senator George Aiken [R-Vt.] and not Kissinger who declared in 1966 that it was time to declare victory and go home. I also believe that if Obama actually decided to stop the bombing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and order an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from both Afghanistan and Iraq, it would then mean that no more Americans would have to end up being blown to bits for absolutely no justifiable reason because the Afghans and the Iraqis have the temerity of defending their countries against the imperial forces of the United States. As one of my bumper stickers correctly points out, We Are Creating Enemies Faster Than We Can Kill Them.
To Paranoid Pessimist--to be honest that is what I thought--he was trying to get those who want to feel safe with a tough president--all his other rhetoric was for discussion and last resort wars--silly us! Fool me once shame on you--fool me twice--uh, uh!
With both Obama and Clinton it feels as if, once they were in office, someone sat them down and told them: "Forget all that stuff you said, here's what you really can and can't do and here's what will happen to you if you go off message."
There you go. Got it in one.
A very well written and important article by Howard Friel. Unfortunately, as well intentioned as his desire is that the Democrats "should now oppose the war in Afghanistan", it is extremely unlikely that the Democrats would actually grow a spine by doing exactly that. As Gore Vidal once noted, there are two major political parties in this country, one party which represents the far right and the other which represents the center-right.
One would have thought that the Democrats would have remembered how another Democrat named Lyndon Johnson also took this country into war, as Friel reminds us, for the most specious of reasons while another Democrat continues two conflicts for no legitimate justifiable reasons. Perhaps if the Democrats who are in Congress were to become a tad anxious as to what one of my buttons says-"Draft the Rich, It's Their War"-then they might finally decide to cut off the funds for the occupations and call for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from that quagmire, both in Afghanistan and Iraq [and that would also include the civilian mercenaries], as quickly and as rapidly as possible.
NO politician of the two-part Demopublican Party - except for the ocassional fluke who somehow got elected despite their good principals - will ever seriously threaten the MIC. As Tip O'Neil so aptly said, "You dance with who brung ya." Until campaign finance reform - REAL reform - becomes a reality, and big business is removed from the electing of our leaders, our Congress-critters will continue to represent those who put them in office: the corporations, which will always profit from war and destruction regardless of how far down the toilet the economy is here in America.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross."
Sinclair Lewis, "It Cant Happen Here", 1935
Demonstorm: While it's not (exactly) my style to quote myself, what I just wrote on another Common Dreams article today is as relevant to your comment about the necessity of REAL campaign reform as it was to the author of that other comment, so I re-post it here:
'''''
Very true, but isn't the problem that we have to achieve election campaign "reform" by getting people who are already advantaged by the system (the "bought and paid for") to reform themselves out of political power? I'm going to suggest an alternative mode of "reform" that might get around this dilemma. This is that we develop political campaigns away from the incredibly expensive media-based campaigns which require inordinate amounts of money to cover them. I know it didn't require a great deal of money for Gandhi to carry out his "passive resistance" campaign against British colonialism, nor should it require so much funding if we could find ways to tap into the "sleeping giant" of populist rage about mortgage foreclosures and layoffs and furloughs and cuts in public services that will be reflected in the everyday action agenda of groups like ACORN and among the inhabitants of that "tent city" expected to arise later this month in Pittsburg.
"The people" are waiting for the inspiration and organization to let them show they can win elections and legislative battles without huge expenditures of PR-type campaign expenditures, simply by exercising the least expensive yet most precious campaign resource: their own votes and their solidarity with one another. Where are the Gandhis who will walk among the boarded-up neighborhoods of our cities and the tent cities of G-whatever neo-liberal meetings as well as those of the homeless in our own American cities? There really are things money can't buy, and the assertion of this people power can by itself drive the money changers from the temples of our democracy. So where are our Gandhis? And our Christs for that matter?
Obama is crawling on his belly in the morass of his own failure. His total phoniness is there for everyone to see, except for his fellow political yuppies who still think he has the world by the short hairs. He will not withdraw from Afghanistan in the wake of his epic health insurance reform failure. He will double down. It is now the self-inflicted fate of the United States to be controlled by its worst people and most destructive forces. Things are so bad that the USA now totally confuses failure for success.
The U.S. does not have a Congress made up of Democratic, Republican,Senators and Representatives, with very few exceptions,Congress is nothing more than a crime family of crooked and corrupt attorneys who represent their true constituents, $,power, and the MIC. O Bomb A is an obomination as he has been part of the same family and has sold out to the criminals. Like someone else said: WE have the best Government money can buy
Wouldn't that be the 'worst' government you could possibly buy for the money?
You do go the Hell for rubber-stamping war don't you?!!
WE NEED TO BAN OR AT LEAST LIMIT HOW MUCH AMERICA'S POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS SPEND IN THEIR ELECTION RACES!!
Bring America Back !!!!
**LOOK ! It was a near mark of sheer Insanity to Vote against the War, and Promise to END the War, as Barak Obama did--then keep the same Bush war criminal as Secretary of Defense==Robert Gates..after being elected President.
**Obama recently appointed another Neocon Republican as
Secretary of the US Army !!!! Her NIbs Clinton is hardly a qualified Sec of
State..no real need to list the reasons why.
**He almost kept the former National Security Agency Director, General Michael Hayden(the FISA wiretapping guy ), as CIA Director, and chose
Leon Panetta instead at the last minute. !
**When, during the campaign for "CHANGE", in quotes, General Wesley Clark supported Obama by suggesting that John McCain's being a Prisoner of War was NOT a qualification for becoming a US President==Team Obama's sensitivity trainer became uppity, and General Clark had to be thrown under the ol Bus of No Change, and Clark's remarks were openly repudiated by Obama.
**Now there would've been a perfect Sec of Def==General Wesley Clark==former Presidential candidate himself, and Chief of "W" Bush's Security Council ! Of course, Clark had blown the whistle on Bush's lies for going into Iraq !!!
So the Neocons were hiding in wait for Clark, and Obama handed him over on a silver platter !! Sadly, Truth gets thrown under the Obama Bus like everything else.
**Last week, Obama's Generals on the Ground--Team McChrystal threw up their mittens as having no clue what to do in Afghan.
===Right there was Obama's true opportunity to fulfill the Saviour Prophesy, deliver his biggest campaign promise, and turn around Us Leftys. He needed to proclaim that was the final Straw===Order troops out of Afghan, Out of Iraq, and to stand down on Pakistan and Iran !!!
***Bring the troops home , NOW, should've been His Directive.
and re-constitute his entire Presidency for the next 3 years.
Stop funding the Wars, and redirect monies to an Independent US Healthcare Program based on Right, Not Privilege.
Since the Military-Industrial Complex and Zion own Team Obama, we shall not
see any of what could be a Monumental Fulfillment of Obama's Election.
They just do not have a Clue !! Remember 9/11 next Friday.
If the members of Congress don't read the material given to them in order for them to make a reasonable decision, how can we expect them to do anything but go along with whatever the president says? They put more confidence in what they are told than the facts presented to them.
The wars will continue until more intelligent, disciplined minds occupy both houses of Congress, and the Constitution is followed, not interpreted.
Obama has disappointed the people who voted for him (not me), and he will depart in the next election. Take that to the bank!
Our bums always fall for the same old bum's rush.
It's time to get wiser more compassionate bums.
PASS A RESOLUTION IN YOUR COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS
I wrote a draft resolution for the New Harford Democratic Club in Harford County, Maryland which opposes further funding for the Afghanistan war. It instructs Congressional representatives to vote against the war and asks them to report back to the club on how they will help end the war. If we can get other political clubs and organizations to adopt these resolutions, we should be able to exercise considerable political strength.
email me at kristboardman@comcast.net if you are interested and I will send you the draft resolution which you can modify for your own organization and polticians.
This draft resolution in our own club is being circulated electronically to our membership and presumably we will vote on this the first week in October, in which case we will have presents to deliver to our congress people.
The point is that Obama literally cannot do this (order the troops home.) Nor does he want to. He would be killed/impeached/sunk/over-ruled by Congress/or even suffer a coup. But none of that would really be necessary. The corporate media would just rise up in phony indignation and he would back down.
However, even that will never happen, because the President is one of the warmongers and seems quite happy to keep killing civilians.
Obama literally CAN order the troops home. He is, after all, as far as the US military chain of command is concerned, their dictator until he leaves office. You are correct his career, and his life, would be in more danger. But, he does have the bully pulpit, access to the internet, and would be listened to by a majority of those in the USA, which gives ample opportunity to recruit support from the public.
At the minimum, Obama lacks the moral and physical courage to do the best thing for his country. That makes him just like the rest of the US military. (Yes, they are brave in fighting for each other, just not when it comes to doing their best for the USA.)
In reality, Obama is bent on a strategy of killing for the benefit of the corporate world, no matter how much harm comes to the USA.
The Congress and Afghanistan: Rubber-Stamping Yet Another War?
"Assuredly!" was my immediate answer.
Less flippantly, it's difficult to sort out cause-and-effect relationships in the complex and circular domain of the dysfunctional Amerikan political process. But here's one angle:
After WWII, the Executive and Legislative Branches mutually agreed to forsake and abandon the Constitution's procedural wisdom towards declaring and funding War.
Instead, they substituted a sort of Executive/Congressional handshake in which the President may authorize unlimited military operations coded in a semantic stew that avoids the taboo term War.
(Sort of the way Team Obama presently avoids declaring the Honduras coup to be a "coup", because that declaration requires the imposition of sanctions which may have unfavorable political repercussions in the US.)
But I digress. Given the substitution of winks and nods for Constitutional accountability among our Elected Misrepresentatives, Congress was primed to take the slippery, sloping Low Road of increasingly deferring to the Executive Branch's prerogative to control foreign policy.
Relinquishing foreign policy entirely to the Executive Branch is a pernicious vestige of monarchism, IMO, but that's another discussion.
Now factor in the insidious Military-Industrial tapeworm that began growing like topsy in the guts of the government during this same post-WWII, Cold War period.
Voilà! Here we have a status quo in which Congress indeed routinely rubber-stamps Executive requests for military funding; the military/contractor beast is overfed and expands accordingly; the Elected Misrepresentatives are in turn paid handsomely by the corporate defense sector (which, as Nick Turse has reported, has itself expanded to total-spectrum dominance in industry), and the cycle of self-serving venality is stoked.
With a continued supply of dense or desperate children volunteering to serve as cannon fodder, the cost of this system is negligible. I speak, of course, in terms of the cost-effectiveness calculus so popular with "pragmatic politicians" like Obama.
Thus, ladies and gentlemen, The Greatest Country in the World has evolved a foreign policy based on human sacrifice, no different from Aztec ritual sacrifice. And it's no improvement to consider that those who aren't sacrificed themselves instead inflict ritual lethal violence upon the innocent in pursuit of phantom "enemies".
It's scandalous, reprehensible, and utterly outrageous in moral, ethical, humane, PRINCIPLED terms. But our Princes have learned that one cannot become Prince in the first place unless one first sheds the inconvenient, burdensome, and risky encumbrance of Principles.
· Yr Obd't Servant
If we leave Afghanistan we won't have anyone else to kill. America only has war endless war keeping most of what's left of it's Industrial base going. The war stops and half the country is unemployed the next day.
How do you like that? Firing someone who tried to bring green jobs to the forefront and perhaps try to help divert people from being suckered into jobs related closer to the MIC and yet this same government doing more war funding ! Call me mad but this now is a DISASTER SIGNAL that more people will find themselves under even more pressure to work in DOD and less in the green jobs market. America, the Green Jobs Project or whatever Obama has promised is now DEAD ! So once again, we the people LOSE yet again no matter how hard we try to pressure Congress and the White House. Not only that but look for more people to find themselves falling into more temptations into signing up just to make a few bucks and try to avoid the severity of the economic crunch. I wish everyone of you the best of luck. All I can do is give the warning signals at this point and I'll try to keep you informed about the general trends but so far, it ain't looking good.
Firing Van Jones or keeping him wouldn't have changed the way war spending was being carried out. This country has been stuck with war spending and while I sympathize with those who are trying to keep afloat, I disagree with such excuse making. I haven't worked in the DoD all my life even in Dubya's time. People have to be trained to opening their hearts and minds to engaging in local economic growth and stop allowing money to be put before true labor and beauty. Money is one thing but peaceful planning long term is what you and most others working for DOD need to stop and consider. Don't get me wrong. I am also disgusted with Congress for rubberstamping more war spending but we the people need to cooperate and unite in our efforts to bring about a better set of pols who won't engage in war spending but will switch to putting health care for all such as single payer on the table first. If your representative and/or Senator(s) regardless of party affiliation are selling out on health care and the war in your state and district, you and others in your state/district need to vote them out and find the desired replacement(s) just like the rest of us here are trying to do.
It's all here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0230602282?tag=lewrockwell&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0230602282&adid=0XP6YNESR24EJ9B60AD2&
This book traces the history of militarism in the USA and also in the Roman Empire and the British Empire. I read a review at Lew Rockwell and it sounds like a revealing look at the history of our military. As it stands now, a few committees in congress call the shots because they are "owned" by the MIC.
Some more real history of how we have been gamed, Henry8.
According to a Supreme Court ruling of 1990 the Congress "rubber stamps" any war/occupation the first time Congress votes funds for that specific war/occupation even in the absence of a Congressional declaration of war. That vote gives the President the green light to continue the war/occupation as if Congress has passed a declaration of war/occupation. The war/occupation in Afghanistan is therefore not new, it is many years old and is therefore a war/occupation that the Bush administration started and which the Obama administration continues. A change of strategy, if there is one, does not make a new war/occupation.
President Obama's justification seems to be: "since Bush's war in Afghanistan is not in the dumb category, my continuation of his war in Afghanistan cannot be dumb either".
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We refuse to heed the military history of this region......"the Graveyard of Empires".
Most recently the U.S.S.R. was defeated in Afghanistan. The mighty Soviet Military was devastated, and the Russian economy was crippled.
The United Stated financed and trained the Muslim "Freedom Fighters", in their war for independance.
The CIA furnished state of the arts, cutting edge weapons and supplies. We also opened up markets for their drug production.
Thirty-five years later, we will be defeated by these same tough guerrillas ambushing the foreign invaders in their rugged mountains. Instead of arrows and spears, today they are using landmines, rockets, bio-weapons, and automatic rifles.
Gee Wiz,,,,,,,our Generals and political leaders are stupid!!!!!!!
General MacArthur would be using Plan B.
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