Replies

It has been a settled principle of constitutional law from very early times that the President does not need a Declaration of War to respond to an attack on the United States. I documented this in this post some time ago. A Declaration of War is a specific kind of thing; it is the public announcement that a government is required by the law of nations to make when it goes from being at peace to being at war. Declaring war is the alternative to making a sneak attack. When the country is attacked, however, someone else has already initiated war by attacking - the country is by that very fact at war and does not need to declare war before defending itself.

The real protection against "Kings' Wars" in the Constitution is exactly what you refer to, the necessity of Congressional approval for military spending. The "King" can't have a war on his own if the elected representatives of the people won't give him the money, and he isn't allowed to get money anywhere else. The English Whigs had already figured that one out.

The terror network is not simply one organization. It is in fact a network of states and international organizations which are deeply interconnected with one another, and which collectively constitute a standing danger to the United States. The real breadth of the Congressional Resolution is contained in the language that covers all those who "aided" the 9-11 attacks, or anyone who has harbored such parties, that is, any party who has aided the attacks, to the end of preventing any future terrorist attacks.

The language is far broader than Rep. Paul's statement acknowledges. It does not say that the Administration needs grand-jury-ready proof of a direct link to 9-11 in order take action. It is language that was intended to cover the entire international terror network. It was clearly known to everyone on September 14 that the Administration was not asking simply for authority to attack Al-Qaeda, but for authority to eliminate the threat of global terrorism altogether. Any conservative original-intent reading of the bill would come to that conclusion. If Rep. Paul, who voted for the authorization, claims now that he did not know what he was voting for, then I'd say he's a liar.

The bottom line here is that Rep. Paul hates government as such, and regards weakening the government as so urgently desirable that a few dirty nukes from Iraq in major American cities killing a few hundred thousand people a few years down the road is a small price to pay.

Paul's foreign policy views are pretty much indistinguishable from Chomsky's or Nader's, i.e. hard Leftist. He is, of course, not any kind of conservative, but a libertarian. That means that like the hard Left he is a Utopian seeking a "revolution of doctrine and of theoretic dogma" (Burke) and really doesn't care about the real-world consequences of his utopian fervor. He gets lumped on the Right because his Utopia doesn't include state-planned social justice, and the Left lumps together everyone who rejects their Utopia as "the Right." If conservatives were assigning the labels, Paul would be considered an unusual variety of Left-wing Utopian.

Fortunately, he is totally insignificant in the real world, a man completely without influence, a curio in the great museum of Congressional oddballs, whose political career probably will last as long as his constituents don't figure out what he really believes. He had to hide his ideology in the Republican Party to get elected to anything in the first place, a wholly cynical move.

I have to add one more observation. Those of us who generally support the President are frequently defamed on FR as unprincipled hero-worshippers who want to shut down free discussion. But I have never seen any supporter of the President on any thread positively screech out direct orders never, ever to criticize George Bush, as several Pauliacs on this thread have done.

Nice rant.

I'll bet you felt better,eh? :-}

You do good stuff, never to old to learn, thanks.

He is, of course, not any kind of conservative, but a libertarian. That means that like the hard Left he is a Utopian seeking a "revolution of doctrine and of theoretic dogma" (Burke) and really doesn't care about the real-world consequences of his utopian fervor. He gets lumped on the Right because his Utopia doesn't include state-planned social justice, and the Left lumps together everyone who rejects their Utopia as "the Right." If conservatives were assigning the labels, Paul would be considered an unusual variety of Left-wing Utopian.

It's always been very amusing to me that Burke used the charge of "revolution of doctrine and of theoretic dogma" to mask the fact that conservatism is not based upon any set of consistent principles.