The most significant argument
flowing from the adoption of the Constitution was the relationship between the
Executive and the Legislative branches of government. Continued suspicion that
a President might assume the powers of a King led Jefferson and others to
insist that Executive power must not only be carefully defined, but also
severely limited. Yet realizing that a President must have leeway in foreign
affairs, which included the right to secret negotiations, as Commander in Chief
the framers allowed the President the right to keep some matters out of public
view. Congress did not have automatic access to everything the Executive did or
knew. The one caveat was the right to declare war, which in the Constitution was
clearly a Congressional prerogative.
But here’s the rub: what’s a war?
If you call sending thousands of troops into Korea “a police action,” which is
what President Truman termed it in 1950, does that mean the Korean War was not
a war at all, and therefore did not need to be declared so by Congress? Is an
air attack on Syria a war? Is the declaration of war restricted to specific
language exactly worded? Perhaps the founders meant these matters to be bathed
in ambiguity.
The conflict between the two branches
of government continues to this day. Here is where it has recently gotten increasingly
sticky. President Bush told the American people that we are now in a global war
against terror. It has included ten years of battlefield action in Iraq and Afghanistan
with thousands of troops killed and trillions of tax dollars expended. But is this
a real war? Congress has never declared it as such. And if it is not a real war,
what is it? It is one thing for a President to act quickly to meet foreign
aggression without Congress being directly involved. The courts have allowed it,
and there are numerous examples throughout American history. But is it quite
another thing to plunge the nation into what promises to be a century-long
series of military actions without the people—by Congress—declaring war.
On its own, can the Executive
branch of government, in pursuit of this global war on terror, conduct covert
activities in a dozen nations, send drones to bomb targets only it has
identified, directly participate in the overthrow of foreign rulers even to the
point of assassination, maintain black—that is unreported—prisons around the
world, engaged in torture, offer billions in military aid without Congress
appropriating it? Or do we really have two governments, one which is out in the
open—of, by and for the people—and a second which is hidden, whose activities
are all classified, and whose operations are even kept from the American people?
Given the deplorable state of
Congress these days, I have to swallow hard to come down on that side of the
Constitutional debate, but the ill-defined and undeclared global war on terror
strikes at the heart of the Constitution. Congress is unable to act, since both
political parties are bought and paid for by the same handful of major American
corporations. These same corporations, and the members of Congress in whose
districts these powerhouses are substantial parts of the local economy, dare
not allow any questions about the billions, which flow, from Washington.
Taking the country back is
a much larger issue than what party gets elected or who is in the White House.
Almost every large corporation in the nation, backed up by massive teams of
lobbyists—many of them ex-elected politicians or their staffs—share in the
booty generated by the military-industrial-political complex. As long as that
wealth rules Washington, the ballot box seems almost useless.
If we are really at war
with a worldwide ideology, not a nation or nations, by what mechanism do we,
the people, have any voice in framing that decision? Or is this the sort of
problem the nation’s founders never contemplated?
Charles Bayer
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