U.S. Senators eagerly evade — the Constitution's assignment of Congressional war-making responsibility

25 September 2017

You may recall that the American Revolutionary War general and later president, George Washington, arguably turned his back on becoming a military-wielding dictator in 1783.

Today's U.S. Senate, however, seems especially eager to dodge its Constitutionally required war-reining responsibility — thereby (again) allowing one American Commander in Chief after another to become a warmongering autocrat:

Last week 61 senators showed they are happy with [the United States' war] situation by tabling an amendment that would have forced a debate about endless, metastasizing wars that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives without making Americans any safer.

The amendment, introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), would have repealed the 2001 authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and the 2002 resolution approving the war in Iraq.

The repeal would have taken effect in six months, giving Congress time to consider the justification for continued U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the various other countries supposedly covered by those resolutions.

Paul notes that Congress never approved U.S. intervention in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Nigeria, or Somalia.

But as far as 61 senators are concerned, there is nothing to debate here.

You can read the names of those 61 responsibility-dodging sluggards, here.

The moral? — There is no point to having a Constitution, when Americans are so complacently happy to ignore it

Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense James Mattis — appropriately called Mad Dog — announced that the American military is starving for money:

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis believes that years of budget uncertainty have left the U.S. military in such a precarious position that if it is not solved soon, it will represent an existential threat to American security.

“If we don’t get budgetary predictability, if we don’t remove the defense caps, then we’re questioning whether or not America has the ability to survive,” Mattis said Sept 20. “It’s that simple.”

We can infer that the $700 billion already voted for defense (more than the President asked for) — and an amount that does not include the unreported billions that mysteriously vanish into secretly indulged national security — is not enough.

Evidently, Secretary Mattis believes that turning the entire American economy toward waging strategically nonsensical wars is History's best wave to ride.

There is no more concise example of Military Industrial Complex's avaricious deviltry. Or of Congress' duty-dodging willingness to indulge it.

PeteFree.com

U.S. Senators eagerly evade — the Constitution's assignment of Congressional war-making responsibility