Am I Anti-American ?

Sobran ^ | 2/26/02 | J Sobran

[detsaoT]

But who did Congress authorize Bush to wage war against? It seems to me that it's not good enough for Congress just to say "we authorize the president to wage war on terriorism" or "anyone who attacked us" because then all the president needs to do wage war without end against anyone he wants to is to call that country "terrorist" or say that one of its intelligence agents "met with a terrorist" or that the country is developing "terrorist weapons of mass destruction." That makes the authority to declare war into a semantic argument, with the rest of us trying to figure out what the meaning of "is" is.

At this point, your arguments are purely philosophical. Congress has passed an open-ended Resolution authorizing any use of force necessary to neutralize terrorist forces, as however they are defined by the Executive branch (the Army and the intel forces). I suspect that the Resolution was not made more specific for a simple, and non-sinister reason: Congress has no idea who the likely suspects are (or, at least, they did not at the time of the Authorization). I haven't had a chance to track down the re-authorization Resolution - It may be more specific.

I'm sure that if the Executive were to try to do something which Congress does not approve, Congress has the converse power to issue a Resolution removing all lawful authorization from the Executive, and then can impeach those in the Executive who choose not to obey the negation of authorization (be it the President, his Cabinet, or those reporting to them, Congress still has the power to cause them to seek other employment...)

:) ttt