Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday told students at Georgetown University that a wartime president has the lawful authority to eavesdrop on Americans’ telephone calls and e-mail messages without court approval.
Even if that Gonzales’ statement was true (which it isn’t), the United States is not in a state of war, so the reasoning is completely specious. For the United States to enter a war, Congress must exercise their constitutional authority to declare war. They have chosen not to do so.
An Anonymous Coward on Slashdot wrote:
And just because you don’t know it, doesn’t make it so. Congress has approved the state of war we are currently in. If you would spend a little time looking, you’d know it.
Likewise, just because you are ignorant of the US Constitution doesn’t make it mean whatever you want it to mean.
I’ve spent a lot of time looking, and Congress has definitely issued no Declaration of War. They’ve passed some namby-pamby resolution that mentions the War Powers Act, but NOWHERE does it declare war. They did that knowing full well that they could have included wording in the resolution to declare war, but they chose not to.
For all those of you that think we really are at war (legally), why do you think Congress was unwilling to issue a simple declaration of war? It’s not like doing so is particularly difficult; it’s just a few words on paper with a few signatures. They could have dusted off any one of the last few they issued (back in 1941) and used it as boilerplate. If they can’t find a copy in the Capitol, I suspect that they could get one from the National Archives.
The fact of the matter is that Congress wanted to have a war, but didn’t want to accept any responsibility for it. “Go bomb Iraq, but don’t blame us for it.” So they issued an unconstitutional “authorization of force” instead, to push the responsibility onto the administration.
If the lack of a declaration of war was just some simple oversight (“Oh really? I thought we did that already!”), then as soon as the matter was brought up publicly they could have corrected it by issuing such a declaration. But they have continued to choose not to do that.
The US Congress is a bunch of “girly men” (and women). A good case can be made that the congresspeople that voted for that “authorization of force” should be charged with treason, as should the President for fighting an undeclared war.
And for those that think, “oh, well, a declaration of war is just a formality, we don’t really need it”, I would point out that apparently the Constitution and Bill of Rights are just formailities, and we don’t really need them. That’s certainly the stated position (in not so many words) of the current administration.
The point of even having a Constitution, laws, etc., is that we are supposed to abide by them. If we can ignore them whenever they happen to be inconvenient to our immediate needs (even the ill-defined “National Security”), then they are worthless. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, not the power to authorize force, and that is an important part of the balance of power of the US government.
If there is a declared war, certain restrictions on the powers of the government are lifted, but if there isn’t a declared war, they aren’t. That is but one reason why it’s very significant that Congress has not seen fit to declare war.
One of the reasons we have an over-reaching judiciary and an increasingly powerful executive is because we have a gutless congress. In a way, I blame the congress most. The judges and the president are stepping into the vacuum those drones on Capitol hill create in their endless quest for authority without responsibility. And then there are the voters…
Forgive me if my comment seems to be a side-track from the above. Although I agree with many of the points, I think there is a bigger picture which explains the apparent absurdity of our leaders taking us into war without officially declaring one, and trampling over civil liberties in the name of patriotism.
In my opinion the problem is not with Congress, nor with Bush, but with our two-party system. Whoever thinks it is a good system is a Democrat or Republican. Long ago these two parties reached some sort of “critical mass” whereby they can use their entrenched positions to thwart any new party from making headway.
When we hold elections nowadays, we are really deciding which party will control each position of authority. We do not elect a person as president anymore, we elect a political party. To be sure, the personalities and opinons of the candidates come into play, but 1) our choices are limited to people who have risen through the ranks of one of the two parties, 2) behind the scenes, unelected party officials have influence on the final slate, and 3) the parties have ridiculous amounts of money to throw at any particular race.
The Congress isn’t a bunch of girly men and women, they are individuals who have succeeded in politics by flowing with the system. While some may have high ideals, none are anywhere near as powerful as the party they belong to. The parties have all the power and their main agenda is to stay in power. Ideological differences have some influence over which party a particular individual associates with – but to the parties as a whole, these differences are significant only in terms of the number of votes you might gain or lose. The trick is to know your crowd, and to tailor your statements to please them. Individuals who are uncompromising in their beliefs are not successful.
The parties have taken over all three branches of government, even the courts which should clearly be apolitical. It seems especially shameful to me that one can often predict how Supreme Court judges will vote on a particular case, based on the party of the president who installed them. The current flap about prosecutors fired for political reasons is another example of the parties’ influence on the judicial branch.
We now have a system with greatly diminished checks and balances between the three branches. It is also a system more easily corrupted, since decisions are made based on vote-getting rather than ideology or conscience.
Now to return to the original point which I was supposed to comment on…
In my opinion the invasion of Iraq under false pretexts, and the trampling of civil liberties, would have been impossible if our political scene was one of diverse opinions, with three independent branches.
Historians will some day make various judgements on why we really invaded Iraq. It seems likely it was a combination of factors, such as Bush’s personal reasons, and possibly ulterior motives of “behind-the-scenes” people. But we can be pretty sure of one thing without waiting for the history books: At some early point in the process both parties assessed how a particular position on the issue might “play out” in terms of vote-getting. The “Patriot Act” and other encroachments on civil liberties were similarly analyzed, not on whether they are right or wrong, but on how many voters would be attracted or alienated.
Both parties believed the voters wanted action to prevent terrorism. The fact that the actions taken have done no such thing, and actually have increased our risk, doesn’t even enter into the equation. The truth is not a vote-getter.