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2013-05-18 Home Front: WoT

US Congress rethinks 9/11 law on military force

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Posted by trailing wife 2013-05-18 00:00|| || Front Page|| [7 views ] Top

#1 If you check the record, Bush complied pro forma with the requirements of the War Powers Act. Obama, ie Libya, didn't and hasn't.

But Republicans and Democrats fear that they have given the president unrestricted power to use military force worldwide

That's been a structural problem since the reinstitution of the draft in 1948. The executive was never suppose to have such vast capabilities in peacetime to avoid 'military adventures' as the Founders viewed it. That long term structural problem resulted in the extensive accumulation of power over at the executive that we are witnessing now the consequence thereof.

The tool that Congress has is the purse strings. That means cutting off funds not just for general operation, but in utilization. However, with the exception of the Donk Congress cutting funding to aid South Vietnam in the 70s, there is little stomach among the Beltway Party to restrain that tool in the executive's hand. Hand wringing as we see here, but nothing real in execution.

A similar structural problem occurred when the Roman Republic 'won' the Second Punic War and found itself with dominions and military commitments throughout their world. Their city-state constitution was not designed for the proto-empire requirements that resulted in ever increasing power in the hands of the consuls, the results of which led to Pompey and Caesar.

Posted by Procopius2k 2013-05-18 07:57|| 2013-05-18 07:57|| Front Page Top

#2 "I don't believe many, if any, of us believed when we voted for that -- and I did vote for it -- that we were voting for the longest war in the history of the United States and putting a stamp of approval on a war policy against terrorism that, 10 years-plus later, we're still using," Durbin said.

The usual fool fails to acknowledge the longest 'war' the United States engaged in was the westward expansion from its inception to the late 1880s, a low intensity conflict with major constabulary operations. From Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian 1866-1891 by Robert M. Utley, does this sound familiar?

Three special conditions set this mission apart from more orthodox military assignments. First, it pitted the army against an enemy who usually could not be clearly identified and differentiated from kinsmen not disposed at the moment to be enemies. Indians could change with bewildering rapidity from friend to foe to neutral, and rarely could one be confidently distinguished from another...Second, Indian service placed the army in opposition to a people that aroused conflicting emotions... And third, the Indians mission gave the army a foe unconventional both in the techniques and aims of warfare... He fought on his own terms and, except when cornered or when his family was endangered, declined to fight at all unless he enjoyed overwhelming odds...These special conditions of the Indian mission made the U.S. Army not so much a little army as a big police force...for a century the army tried to perform its unconventional mission with conventional organization and methods. The result was an Indian record that contained more failures than successes and a lack of preparedness for conventional war that became painfully evident in 1812, 1846, 1861, and 1898.

Posted by Procopius2k 2013-05-18 08:04|| 2013-05-18 08:04|| Front Page Top

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