Category Archives: War

Why The Warring About War: What The Moron Media Don’t Explain

Constitution, Just War, libertarianism, War

This past Friday, CNN was festooned with the usual bobbing heads kibitzing about whether or not the administration had committed the country to war or not. The quarreling parties did not explain to the viewers whose brains they addle daily, why this distinction mattered. I doubt they know. I mean, if the president indeed possesses all the powers CNN journos often claim for him—why must their Almighty Mulatto bother to seek consent for his actions? Republicans are pretty much on board when it comes to executive overreach, although they’d prefer their guy to be doing the overreaching.

Here is a typical exchange, times 10 a day:

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Is the United States at war with ISIS. It sure sounds from the president’s speech that we are.

JOHN KERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: I think that is the wrong terminology.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Make no mistake. We know we are at war with ISIL.

BURNETT: Is this war?

MCCHRYSTAL: Well, I mean, you can trip over and argue about whether it’s a war for congressional purposes. If you are on the ground and people are getting killed, to a soldier it feels like war and to the population it feels like war. So it’s a struggle.

[SNIP]

And here’s the logical extension of the “to war or not to war” debate, which the Moron Media seems incapable of deducing: It matters whether the president has committed the country to war or not, because:

1) While the power to declare war under various statutes like the War Powers Act, the Iraq Resolution, and the Use of Force Act was shifted to the Executive, to comport with a trend toward centralization of power in this branch—according to these statutes, the War Powers Act, in particular, “he cannot lawfully pursue any military action whatsoever after 180 days.”

2) War declared by executive order may be legal, but it is still unconstitutional. It flouts the obligation to get “the consent of the governed,” to quote the Declaration of Independence.

The libertarian’s duty is to reject the law of the state when it is at odds with natural justice. The process adopted so far by the Bush and Obama executive flouts both the U.S Constitution and the natural law. But Just War principles are for another debate, another time.

As for the Constitution, over to James Madison: “‘Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded.’ Thus it is Congress that declares a war. The U.S. government is beholden to the Constitution, which prohibits the president from declaring war.

Explains Louis Fisher, senior specialist in separation of powers at the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress: ‘Keeping the power to commit the country to war—and to all the costs of war—in separate hands from the power to wage war once declared was a bedrock principle for the framers.'”

Modern statutes like the War Powers Resolution, the Iraq Resolution, and the Use of Force Act do not displace the constitutional text and the framers’ intent. (From “UNNATURAL LAWLESSNESS”)

He Doesn’t Have a Strategy. OMG!

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Middle East, Neoconservatism, War

Hussein doesn’t have a strategy to police the world. Good. I have one for him: First do no harm. The chicken hawks at Fox News, however, are hot for war. The headlines there practically scream:

Obama on Syria: ‘We don’t have a strategy yet’
Krauthammer: Obama’s strategy ‘is to do absolutely nothing’

What precisely did Obama say that has chicken hawk Chucky so cross with the president: He “told reporters Thursday that ‘we don’t have a strategy yet’ for confronting ISIS on a regional level.”

Megyn Kelly, whose show has degenerated into a rah-rah, flag-waving, hour-long session, bemoaning outrages over diminished US world hegemony, shook her head in dismay at Mike Huckabee’s excellent suggestion: Let the Arab League deal with ISIS.

Yeah, the neighborhood, Israel included, doesn’t seem particularly concerned about ISIS. Or perhaps the US has enabled inertia and apathy with its interventions.

The illogic I don’t get is this: How can media members worry about ISIS in the Levant, when America’s southern border is utterly open? Can they be that stupid? Why not challenge the president about the real danger of failing to defend the homeland’s borders?

GOP Should Grow A Brain, Join The Peace Train

Foreign Policy, Iraq, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Military, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Republicans, War

“GOP Should Grow A Brain, Join The Peace Train” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

… Texas Gov. Rick Perry was not the only Republican warbot to pile on Sen. Rand Paul. “In the past three days alone, recapitulated Politico, Perry used a Washington Post op-ed to warn about the dangers of ‘isolationism’ and describe Paul as ‘curiously blind’ to growing threats in Iraq. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) accused the Kentucky senator on CNN of wanting a ‘withdrawal to fortress America.’ And former Vice President Dick Cheney declared … that ‘isolationism is crazy,’ while his daughter, Liz Cheney, said Paul ‘leaves something to be desired, in terms of national security policy.’

Like McMussolini, the vampiric father and daughter duo are a spent force, easily dismissed by a young turk. But can Rand stand up to the Joint Chiefs? Military movers and shakers are heavily vested in the sunk-cost fallacy—the irrational notion that more resources must be committed forthwith in Iraq (and elsewhere), so as to “redeem” the original misguided commitment of men, money and materiel to the mission. To that end, repeated ad nauseam is the refrain about our “brave men and women of the military,” whose sacrifice for Iraqi “freedoms” will be squandered unless more such sacrifices are made. The Skeptic’s Dictionary dispels this illogic: “To continue to invest in a hopeless project is irrational. Such behavior may be a pathetic attempt to delay having to face the consequences of one’s poor judgment. The irrationality is a way to save face, to appear to be knowledgeable, when in fact one is acting like an idiot.” Besides, it’s time the military heed its paymasters, The American People, a majority of whom “don’t want to send U.S. soldiers back into Iraq.”

… Read the complete column. “GOP Should Grow A Brain, Join The Peace Train” is now on WND.

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Bill Clinton Correct About Cheney

Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, Neoconservatism, War

Just as I was beginning to harbor some hope that Mark Levin would ditch neoconservatism, the broadcaster galvanized rhetorical firepower to defend Dick Cheney, this week, from Bill Clinton’s coruscating attack. Levin went so far as to scold Genghis Bush for not helping Cheney out. After all, said Levin, Cheney was a sickly man battling the administration all alone over Iraq.

Hopeless.

Admittedly, Bill Clinton has given voice to the truth late in the day, but everything he said about Cheney is correct.

Meet the Press’s David Gregory had asked “Bill Clinton about the current crisis in Iraq and whether Dick Cheney is a ‘credible critic’ in going after the Obama administration for ISIS taking over major cities there. Clinton chuckled and said, ‘I believe if they hadn’t gone to war in Iraq, none of this would be happening.’”

A no-brainer.

How, however, will Bill cover for wife Hill, who has “refused to atone for her role in the prosecution of an unjust war.” As detailed in “Confess, Clinton; Say You’re Sorry, Sullivan”:

During the Democratic presidential candidates’ debate in New Hampshire, Clinton was asked whether she regretted “voting to authorize the president’s use of force against Saddam Hussein in Iraq without actually reading the national intelligence estimate, the classified document laying out the best U.S. intelligence at that time.” Her reply: “I feel like I was totally briefed. [Expect the “I-feel-like” locution to proliferate if a woman is ensconced in the White House.] I knew all the arguments. I knew all of what the Defense Department, the CIA, the State Department were all saying. And I sought dissenting opinions, as well as talking to people in previous administrations and outside experts.”

Back to the humdrum truth Bill uttered to Gregory about Cheney:

Gregory brought up Syria, which Clinton didn’t deny is a problem all on its own, but “what happened in Syria wouldn’t have happened in Iraq” if the Bush administration hadn’t taken the country to war and Iraq wouldn’t have been so “drastically altered.”
Clinton also found it “unseemly” that a former vice president is “attacking the administration for not doing an adequate job for not cleaning up the mess that he made,”