Health & Fitness
President Obama is about to violate our Constitution
Do you wish to spend another $2 trillion in another Middle Eastern war that will result in thousands of American and Syrian casualties?
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the Nation.” — Senator Barack Obama, 2007.
THAT is the law -- and what our Constitution provides in the War Power Clause. The march toward yet another military attack, based on less than solid intelligence, on the say of one person is exactly what the Founders feared and sought to protect against. In a letter to Jefferson, Madison wrote: “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It [the Constitution] has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.”
Madison also wrote: "In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department." Jefferson and Hamilton made several similar unequivocal statements.
For Secretary of Defense (what a misleading name that department has!) Hagel to say that our military is ready to strike as soon as Obama says so is an outrage to our Constitution, the intention of the Founders to prevent tyranny, and the system of checks and balances. The only power to decide to go to war resides with Congress -- and it is time that indecent, craven body of unprincipled self-aggrandizers steps up and assumes its most solemn constitutional responsibility to decide whether our country will commit our military to deadly hostilities.
Rocky Anderson
