The war in Afghanistan always has been sold to Americans as a struggle to defend liberty in the United States. This has been a complete lie since George W. Bush spoke the words in 2001. Bush and his administration, and Obama’s after it, did more to reduce and constrict the civil liberties of Americans’ at home than Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and all the mujahedin could have done in a century.
The Bush-Obama lie has been heard before in the republic’s history. It was championed by Jefferson and Madison as they tried to force Washington’s administration to join France in the war it had started against Britain and most of Europe. They claimed, if America failed to do so, France’s liberty would be extinguished by its enemies, who would then turn and end America’s. Washington refused. He issued a Declaration of Neutrality on 22 April 1793, and Hamilton used his rapier-like pen to put paid to the pro-France bleating of Jefferson and Monroe. “The circuitous logic,” Hamilton wrote, using the pseudonym Americanus,
by which its attempted to be maintained, that a [U.S.] participation in the war is necessary to the security of our own liberty would then appear, as it truly is, a mere delusion, propagated by bribed incendiaries or hair-brained enthusiasts. And the authors of the delusion [Jefferson, and Madison] would not fail to be execrated as enemies of the public weal. [1]
The bald lies of Jefferson and Madison, and Bush and Obama, however, still lie on the wagging tongues of our everlastingly avaricious and war-loving congressman and senators. This month, the House Armed Services Committee placed obstacles in the way of President Trump completing the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. These blocks were imposed by a bipartisan vote of 45 to 11. Next, the Senate performed the same war-loving task by a bipartisan vote of 60 to 33.
Readers of this site will recall that I have always argued that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats on the issue of war. Both are enriched and ego-sated by sending young military men and women to their demise or maiming in wars that have little to do with U.S. national security. What the wars do is serve presidents like Bush and, especially, Obama, by allowing them to do the thing they love best after war; namely, using so-called national security threats to gut the Bill of Rights and reduce Americans from citizens to subjects. On the latter, recall the Patriot Act, the wrecking of the 4th Amendment, and add to them the Democrats’ current armed insurrection and attacks on the 1st Amendment during the Chinese Virus.
Along comes President Trump who is determined to end 75 years of illegal, bipartisan, and interventionist American wars. He is blocked at every turn by elected representatives whose role in war the Constitution intended to be to ensure the republic never went to war because of a president’s whim. Their aim in these actions is to ensure the continuity of their personal economic gain, as well their life-long right to perform the “Leaders of the Free World Strut”. These personal priorities outweigh any chance of the citizenry enjoying peace and neutrality, which really are the jewels provided by ordered liberty and a military able to defend neutrality.
This is not a difficult problem to get your hands around. It is a simple story. First, the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to declare war. The Founders clearly meant to avoid the possibility of the president and the Executive Branch taking America to war without the consent of the people, as expressed by a majority vote of their elected representatives. The Congress’s power to declare war is its power alone; it is not a power that can be constitutionally delegated to another branch of government.
But what to we have now? Well, in a de facto sense, Americans are governed, in the area of war, by a monarch called the president. He is empowered – unconstitutionally — by the Congress to decide for all Americans when the republic should go to war. Thus, the Bushes, Clintons, and Obama took the country to war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Libya, the Balkans, and Yemen. The Congress declared war in none of these instances, they were solely presidential wars, making all of them unconstitutional. A more transparent and catastrophic example of Congress not doing its job, and of the Executive over-reaching its authority, cannot be imagined.
The culprits in this constitutional debacle are – not surprisingly – the cowards, butt-coverers, authoritarians, and connivers that Americans have consistently elected to both houses of Congress since 1945. These charlatans, over time, found a way to avoid their exclusive constitutional duty – for the results of which they would be held accountable — through a thoroughly lawless vehicle called Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). This measure deftly gives Congress immunity regarding its abdication of its constitutional duty to decide, by a public vote, if the people of the United States are to go to war in a specific situation.
By always having an AUMF hanging about, the Congress lives in a win/win political nirvana when it comes to the issue of war. If, on the one hand, the President starts a war based on AUMF, and it goes well, congressmen and senators can brag that they supported the president and our “men and women in uniform” at every step of the way to victory. If, on the other hand, the war the president starts goes belly up – or more likely never ends – congressmen and senators can damn him for starting the war; for failure to “consult” with Congress before acting; for killing civilians in the war-zone; for acting like a dictator; for gratuitously getting Marines and soldiers killed and maimed; for spending exorbitant amounts, etc. With the AUMF, the generally war-wanting Congress largely insulated itself from the repercussions of wars the citizenry has not supported, while supplying fuel for the blood-lust of presidents like the Bushes, Clinton, and, particularly, Obama.
This is not to cut presidents any slack. Starting with Harry Truman’s one-man war in Korea, most post-1945 presidents have been war-lovers. The only exceptions to this group are Eisenhower, Kennedy (?), Reagan, and Trump, although none of them fully. The perpetually present danger of granting power to any man, lies in the fact that human nature is fitted out with a hunger for power that can seldom be sated. Give him some power, and he will seek more; give more, and the process will continue until you have a tyrant, like Obama.
All leaders granted power by the people must be minutely observed for signs of growing tyranny; in the 18th Century, this kind of constant observation was termed “jealously”. The Founders, especially General Washington, urged the citizenry — as the source of all power– to always be “jealous” when assessing the actions of those they elected. Indeed, that is precisely why the Founders filled the Constitution with means – checks and balances – to keep each of the three branches of the national government operating only within its own constitutional lane.
The sum here is that the Afghan war and all U.S. wars since V-J Day have been illegal and unconstitutional. No matter what distinguished constitutional scholars and highly respected jurists say, this is a fact. One of the many beauties of the U.S. Constitution is that it was written by men who considered themselves citizens, and who wrote it so that it could be understood by their fellow citizens. Still, there are a few ambiguities in it, such as the so-called “general-welfare” and “necessary-and-proper” clauses, which have been twisted by gangster politicians and partisan courts into economic, social, and equality-before-the-law disasters.
There is no ambiguity about the war-power, however, it belongs only to Congress, and it cannot be delegated by Congress to any other entity. Like the 2nd Amendment, its words provide no room for “interpretation” by shyster lawyers, politicians, academics, and judges. The Constitution does, indeed, block the president from taking the republic to war on his own accord. This block is essential to the maintenance of liberty and it ought to be preserved – or, rather, restored – and obeyed forever.
But the Constitution says nothing about “declaring peace”; indeed, the role of declaring war that was given to the Congress was the single exception to the Executive Branch’s control of foreign policy as described in Article II. By the Constitution’s silence on making peace, it seems clear that peace-making remains within the Executive Branch’s portfolio of foreign-policy responsibilities.
Today, America’s current commander-in-chief is studiously working to shut down the unconstitutional, unnecessary, and long-lost wars in which America is engaged. While the Congress said not a word about these unconstitutional, presidentially declared wars when they started, now its sturdy ranks of war-lovers and war-profiteers are blocking this president’s effort to end the wars and halt the republic’s human and monetary bleeding. In essence, the clown show that is Congress is saying the president cannot declare peace. That is hokum.
Let’s start anew. Focus first on Afghanistan. U.S. forces have been defeated there. That has been clear for a half-dozen-years, at least, and the fault must be laid at the feet of the general officers who commanded U.S. Marines and soldiers. These generals – many of whom are now desperate to defeat Trump – care not a lick about winning. The generals, and the members of Congress, only care about keeping wars going because that is their royal road to personal enrichment.
The House and Senate votes to block Trump’s withdrawal from Afghanistan is meant to keep a lost war going, mostly in the hope that the Taliban or another Afghan group will kill a sizeable number of U.S. troops, thereby resurrecting the citizenry’s support for vengeance and reinvigorating the Afghan war effort with more troops and spending. In essence, the Congress wants to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan as bait; if a sizeable number are killed, the Congress will have another big-time, war-making pay day on its hook.
The war in Afghanistan is irretrievably lost. Now is the time for the republic as whole to man-up and say the game there is not worth the candle; its continuation would be nothing but pure and wanton human and financial waste. Make peace in Afghanistan by withdrawing all U.S. forces, Mr. President, and, while you are at it, get our troops out of the Balkans, which is sliding toward another war in which we have no interest.
There is nothing in the Constitution that says you cannot declare peace. Get our men and women home, Mr. President, and let their parents and all Americans see and hear the war-mongering bastards in Congress attack your decision to prevent any more of their military children being killed or maimed in a war lost by U.S. generals, men and women who were content to let U.S. casualties mount for no purpose other than their future remuneration in corporate America.
–Endnote:
–1.) “Americanus [Alexander Hamilton], No. 1, 31 January 1794,” in Morton J. Frisch, (ed.), The Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793-1794. Toward the Completion of the American Founding. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2007, p. 103
