Thursday, January 26, 2017

Congress should enact a No Presidential Wars statute

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.

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