Posted on 12/10/2011 1:46:40 PM PST by rabscuttle385
James Madison, “The Father of the Constitution,” wrote: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
Enabling governments to “control the governed” has always been easy, as tyranny has long been mankind’s default position: Virtually every regime in history has sought to increase its power. Obliging government to “control itself” has always been the hard part, and nations that value freedom have always tried to place limits on their rulers in recognition of the fact that governors are not always angels.
Most Americans, from the Founding Fathers to the current generation, would likely agree that decisions to wage war are probably the most important decisions our federal government makes. Madison noted that it was a fairly universal truth that the more powerful a government’s leaders, the more interest there will be in going to war. “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,” Madison wrote. “[The Constitution] has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.”
Last week, Senator Jim DeMint studied the question of the nine-year-long Iraq War, and decided to end it. I don’t mean “end” the Iraq War in merely the sense that President Obama now advertises — bringing the troops home, ending hostilities, etc. Hell, President Obama starts and ends wars all the time (see: Libya) without even the pretension of seeking legal authority. Sen. DeMint’s support was for something much different and more significant: He voted to end the Iraq War by demanding that the president no longer be able to legally wage it.
The United States hasn’t officially declared war since World War II. Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan — none of these were “wars” officially, though the men and women who fought in them might beg to differ. President Bush took us to war with Iraq in 2003 in the same extra-constitutional manner: He went to Congress to get “authorization,” but still both Congress and the president apparently thought that the Iraq War wasn’t important enough to merit an official declaration of war, as the Constitution demands.
When Senator Rand Paul offered an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act last month that would revoke the authorization given to Bush in 2003 regarding Iraq, only three Republican senators joined him: DeMint, Dean Heller of Nevada and moderate Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine. There were plenty of Democrats who voted for Paul’s amendment. Of course, there were plenty of Democrats who were against the Iraq War from the beginning, though they were probably not motivated by limited-government considerations.
Sen. DeMint supported the Iraq War. Most Republicans did. Conservatives can now debate whether that support, in retrospect, was justified. But Sen. Paul’s amendment was a debate over whether the Iraq War is still justified today. Paul’s amendment was also a debate over whether giving the president of the United States carte blanche in Iraq is still justified. Only four Republicans said “no.”
It is DeMint’s vote that is the most instructive. Sen. Paul is a tea party champion who has always been upfront about his opposition to the Iraq War. While her vote was commendable, Sen. Snowe is not exactly a guiding light for most Republicans. Sen. Heller probably has the lowest profile of the four. But Sen. DeMint is a conservative’s conservative. The right has long followed DeMint’s lead on most issues. Conservatives need to follow it on Iraq and executive power too.
If the Republican Party has any interest in limited government or the Constitution, the president’s authority to wage war in Iraq must eventually be revoked. As it stands now, this president and any future president will have the power to do whatever he likes militarily in Iraq without so much as consulting Congress. Many Republican members of Congress were rightly miffed that President Obama did not consult them before his recent military action in Libya. As it stands, Congress now gives any president free rein to do the same in Iraq. Forever.
For conservatives to dismiss war and foreign policy as the one area where presidents should have unlimited power is to dismiss the very purpose of our Constitution’s system of checks and balances. As Madison recognized, the president should not be entrusted with the power to act unilaterally, especially when it comes to war.
Americans must choose between Madison’s understanding of executive power and Obama’s. Last month, Sen. Jim DeMint chose Madison’s. His fellow conservatives must eventually choose too.
“I do not like chicken hawks like you who are beating the war drums when you know it won’t be your butt on the line. By the way, unless you are well over a hundred years old we had women in uniform in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Where were you, hero?”
Megabump.
I've heard that liberal propaganda before. Question is, why do you believe it? You think we have endless money to fund so-called "endless cycles of war" et cetera?!? Sounds like something repeated verbatim from Bertelsmann media.
Reread my post. You know, the part about endless cycles of war in Iraq at any sitting president’s pleasure
You know what that would have done, right? It would have resulted in Iran taking over Iraq sooner. And since you have therein left Iran untouched, the Islamic Iraqis' heart to "ever assist others in attacking us" would have been even stronger, since all you did was run away after the initial "shock and awe" rather than having the heart to impose your will.
We should have left after that with saddam hanging froma lamp post with a sign pinned to his chest promising to come back and kick their asses again if they ever assist others in attacking us
Eh? That's the Pearl Harbor mentality. It's as bad as the mentality that Truman had vis-à-vis his firing MacArthur (which in itself was worse, since Red China actually attacked us and Truman wanted to do nothing about it whereas MacArthur wanted to counterattack . . . there's a reason why The Art Of War says "If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it").
Unless missiles are en route, we have time to decide if we want to go to war
You mean the same "Obama and the Demonrats" who are pulling out of Iraq right now and are trying to run away from what they dubbed the "War of Necessity" in Afghanistan? Yeah, they sound like real war hawks, don't they? Funny how you make the invalid comparison with their pushing through domestic socialist programs with something that the Obama administration is not doing (expanding wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to defeat Islamic terrorism in Iran and Pakistan, never mind the Levant). Gotta love your consistency . . .
You sound like obama and the demonrats who are always in a big rush to push their garbage through before anyone can figure out what’s going on
If the Iraqis care so little for their country that they allow Iran to take over, then they don’t deserve their country in the first place.
And if they do, then they have the will... coupled with the means (funded through oil money) to keep their country.
Which means that you’d be wrong.
Sending our kids overseas to defend corporate interests is neither conservative or patriotic.
You don’t have to be a fan of endless war to be an “actual” conservative. Nice try though.
Agreed 100%
Now only cowards oppose wasteful military excursions?
I’m saying that if the Iraqis don’t want to fight for their country, then they don’t deserve a country.
‘Cause it, obviously, means so little to them that they would not even be willing to fight for it.
And no amount of blood, sweat, toil, and tears of America will be able to change that about them, for it’s something *THEY* have to want/desire.
It may surprise many here, but I completely agree with you ThermoNuke. Don't go to war unless you intend to win it with whatever it takes. Get something out of it to teach your enemy a lesson to never touch you again and then get the hell out -- no apologies.
But don't treat it lightly or get into half-wars and nation building or regime change BS. And only go to war for the US, not NATO, or some globalist game. That's what the Declaration of war is all about -- getting the will of the people behind the war. You are at war, you are at war -- we sacrifice and then we come home.
If it were up to me, there wouldn't have been a single poppy field left in the country in Afghanistan by the end of the first week of our attack and the only boots one the ground would have been hunting bin Laden.
As for Iraq, GHB didn't have the guts to finish Saddam off the first time which is why we got stuck in the mud there and had to go slogging back in under GWB. No excuse for that. And Iraq is no better now 20 years later than it was when we first invaded in 1991 -- as a matter of fact it's worse off. Saddam may well have been a bastard, but before Desert Storm, Iraq had one of the most secular Constitutions in the Muslim world -- now Assyrian Christians have been sent running for their lives -- and thanks to the rest of the upheaval we've caused in the region, they have nowhere left to go.
So what did we win? A few months ago a US Congressman was actually thrown out of Iraq when he asked if they would be paying us back. Headshake.
Fight who for their country?
Churchill said "The history of man is war." It's something that can't be avoided. Other countries are very happy to embrace war as part of their foreign policy. Not to mention that the country has gone a bit too far left and started thinking that God's protection isn't required. (When was the last time a day of prayer was called, so that we could be victorious over an enemy with a decisively-perverted worldview that drives him to atrocities that plumb new depths of depravity?)
We shouldn’t be fighting wars anymore. We can’t accept the horrors and realities of war any longer. We don’t accept winning a war at any cost the way wars should be fought
True! National interest has nothing to do with defending other nations who can defend themselves.
Because, unless we stay there for eternity, that is what will happen regardless of when we leave.
Either now, in a month, or a year, or a decade, or a century... or in a thousand years; if the people of a country are not willing to fight to defend it, they will *LOSE* it to anyone that wants to take it.
The only way to fix that problem is to either figure out how to make the Iraqis want to defend their country... or replace the population of Iraq with one that does (ie: kill the rat b@st@rds off and the colonize).
Now, killing off the population and colonizing is now a ‘war crime’, so it’s not going to happen. Plus, we’ve spent the greater part of a decade trying to convince the Iraqis to actually give a d@mn about defending their country.
So, how long is long enough? How much of America’s blood, sweat, and toil are you willing to spend to try and convince the Iraqis to want to defend their land?
And at what point to you say that enough is enough?
In my view, it’d... ultimately... be cheaper to simply destroy Iran and let the chips fall where they may on Iraq. Mind you, that’s the utter destruction of Iran as a country and as a people.
For they can’t rebuild from something like that.
A few neutron bombs over all their major civilian population centers, a few regular nukes for their military bases and nuclear production centers... and then blockade the remains of the country so no relief can arrive.
Within a few months, Iran would simply become just a footnote in a history book.
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