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Congress Should
Enact a No Presidential Wars Statute
By Bruce Fein
January 26,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "WT"
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Congress should enact a “No Presidential Wars” statute
that defines “presidential wars;” declares them contrary
to the U.S. Constitution’s Declare War Clause; and,
makes presidential wars prospectively impeachable high
crimes and misdemeanors justifying removal from office
under Article II, section 4.
This will make
America great, prosperous and invincible against
aggression faster and surer than any alternative. The
United States is currently engaged in nine presidential
wars: Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, al Qaeda and ISIS. Every soldier involved in
these engagements should be redeployed to the United
States with enhanced pay for invincible self-defense.
The fully allocated cost of fighting presidential wars
since 9/11 approaches a staggering $10 trillion.
War is the
oldest scourge of mankind.
It turns
children into orphans, wives into widows, and makes
fathers bury sons rather than sons bury fathers.
It silences the
law, crushes liberty, aggrandizes executive power,
spirals debt, diverts genius from production to
destruction, promotes secret government, precipitates
blowback, and afflicts our own soldiers with PTSD
generated suicides. Alexis de Tocqueville observed in
“Democracy in America: “All those who seek to destroy
the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that
war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.”
Thousands of
years of history taught the Constitution’s authors that
the executive would be predisposed toward war to enhance
power, to excite patriotic support, to operate secret
and unaccountable government, and to leave a legacy.
In contrast,
the legislative branch is a highly risk-averse talking
shop which will only take the nation from peace to war
in response to actual aggression against the United
States. Gratuitous wars have nothing in them for members
of
Congress. Their powers and stature are eclipsed by
an omnipotent president. They win no fame or
remembrance.
Congress has declared war in only five conflicts
since its birth 227 years ago, and only when members
were convinced the United States had been attacked.
Everyone who
participated in the drafting, debating and ratifying the
Constitution highly distrusted the presidency in matters
of war and peace. They unanimously entrusted to
Congress exclusive responsibility for taking the
nation to war in Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the
Constitution. The authors did not believe the power of
the purse would be sufficient to prevent presidential
wars. They knew once the president commits troops,
members of
Congress would be forced to provide funding under
the banner of patriotism. The universal sentiment was
expressed by James Madison in a letter to Thomas
Jefferson: “The constitution supposes, what the History
of all Govts demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of
power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has
accordingly with studied care, vested the question of
war in the Legisl.”
Despite the
clarity of the constitutional prohibition, presidents
have chronically decided to take the nation from peace
to war since at least President Harry Truman’s decision
to fight the Korean War in 1950 without a congressional
declaration. Fueled by a multi-trillion dollar
military-industrial-counterterrorism complex,
presidential wars have come to dominate the nation’s
budget and agenda. The warfare state has given birth to
the surveillance state, the bail-out state, and the
welfare state. The federal government has ballooned into
a $4.3 trillion Leviathan.
Congress and
the American people have generally ignored the
lawlessness of presidential wars and the havoc they have
wrought both at home and abroad. We are imitating all
previous empires in our enthusiasm for self-ruination.
Presidential wars have become de facto constitutional.
This must change.
Through a “No
Presidential Wars statute,”
Congress needs to establish rules defining and
sanctioning presidential wars prospectively. The law
should warn before it strikes. And nothing good can come
from taking up arms against history.
Presidential
wars should be defined as wars in which the president
decides to take the United States from a state of peace
to a state of war. It should not include wars in which
Congress has decided itself to take the nation from
peace to war. Neither should it include cases in which
the president responds with proportionate military force
in national self-defense against actual or imminent
aggression or a declaration of war against the United
States by a foreign nation or non-state actor. But
presidential wars should include cases in which the
president unilaterally decides to make the United States
a co-belligerent in an ongoing war by systematically or
substantially supplying one of the warring parties with
war materials, military troops, trainers or advisers,
military intelligence, financial support or its
equivalent. Presidential wars should further be defined
to include cases where an incumbent continues an
unconstitutional presidential war commenced by a
predecessor.
The “No
Presidential Wars” statute should also declare that a
violation will be deemed a high crime and misdemeanor
under Article II, section 4, and will cause the
President to be impeached by the House, convicted by the
Senate, and removed from office.
It would mark
the Constitution’s finest hour, and save the republic
from destruction.
Copyright ©
2017 The Washington Times, LLC.
The views
expressed in this article are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
Information Clearing House.
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