WSJ Pooh-Poohs "Kucinich Republicans" & Other Congressfolks Who Have Read the Constitution…
An unsigned WSJ editorial lays into "Kucinich Republicans" who went wobbly went it comes to rubber-stamping any and all presidential interventions into distant lands. Eight-seven Republicans (including such fire-burping hawks as cantaloupe-shooting, bastard-siring Dan Burton of Indiana), complains the Journal, became situational isolationists simply because a Dem is in the White House. They voted for a resolution by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) that would end the "kinetic military action" in Libya because Barack Obama has shown no interest in following constitutional procedure when it come to waging war.
The Kucinich resolution failed, 265-148, but only after Speaker John Boehner offered his own alternative resolution that demanded no deployment of ground troops and rebuked Mr. Obama for failing to provide "a compelling rationale" for the Libyan conflict and giving him 14 days to provide one—or, well, nothing. Mr. Boehner's resolution passed 268-145, but it is little better than Mr. Kucinich's as a demonstration of House commitment to U.S. forces in the field.
As a spokesman for Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it during the Libya debate, the vote "sends an unhelpful message of disunity and uncertainty to our troops, our allies and, most importantly, the Gadhafi regime." The esteemed Members want to vote against the war, without actually taking responsibility for stopping it….
If Mr. Obama won't defend his office, then Republicans ought to. This is what Mitch McConnell and John McCain are doing in the Senate, and it would be useful if some of the GOP Presidential candidates spoke up in the same way. Mr. Obama deserves criticism for his uncertain war resolve, and for tying himself down, like Gulliver, with a weak U.N. Security Council resolution and Arab League permission to act. But this is no excuse for tying his hands further at home in a way that will only increase the price of victory.
Let's leave aside whether your position on bombing Libya while leading NATO from behind has anything to do with hawk or dove status. You don't need to be the real Bob Taft or Bob Dole to start muttering about "Democrat wars."
It's a sad day for the Republic when insisting that the president actually, you know, get an authorization of force as kinda sorta suggested by the Constitution is seen as akin to open rebellion or creating a fifth column. What is this, Star Wars? Rome? As Tim Cavanaugh and that other super-peacenik outfit, the Washington Times, point out, between Kucinich's and Boehner's all-too-timid requests, three-quarters of the House of Representatives have expressed dissatisfaction when it comes to how Obama is deploying troops. The only real question is when Congress is going to take the advice of good ol' Sharron Angle and man up already and start playing its actual role as a counterweight to an imperial presidency that has never served the nation any good.
Reason.tv on Obama's War That Isn't a War:
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Obama needs no justification other than the divine right of kings.
Anyone who denies his jus primae noctis will just be called a racist.
The republicans are foolish to offend the imperium and majesty of the presidency.
He wants to fuck the village women?
I learned about divine right of kings in fifth grade.
You are not smarter than a fifth grader.
I was going to make a joke about princes inter pares, but presidents these days don’t bother to veil their extraordinary powers. Even Augustus had the decency to pretend.
~= s/princes/princeps/gi
Both sides want the undeclared war option when they are running the show but its only because they understand how to use it, while the opposition doesn’t
I think the Journal is just pursuing the “John Theory of the Constitution” here, namely:
“Well, I believe in the Constitution, but since the President has already violated it, now everyone should shut up and support him, and we can argue about the constitutionality of his actions after the war is over, and if the war never ends well we’ll just cross that bridge when we come to it or maybe never”.
Bullshit. When I have I ever said that the President doesn’t need Congressional authorization to go to war? Small things like escort tankers maybe. But bomb a country for months? Absolutely. I have never argued otherwise. Bush got Congressional authorization for Iraq.
If you want to argue with me, feel free. But at least argue with things that I actually say.
John,
On numerous other issues where Congressional or public oversight of the President’s unilateral authority to do whatever he wants overseas is concerned, you routinely argue that Presidents have always broken the rules during “wartime”, and that we should just shut up and wait it out until the crisis ends and the pendulum swings back the other way.
Guantanamo comes to mind.
I have consistently argued that it is within the President’s constitutional power and within the law of war to detain enemy combatants without taking them to court. You don’t like that argument and don’t have a good response to it. So you instead pretend that I am arguing might makes right, which is completely false.
don’t have a good response to it
This is a separate issue, but BULL-SHEET, baby.
So you’re actually going to sit there and declare that you have NEVER ONCE SAID in any context or on any issue that constitutional abuses happen all the time in wartime and there’s nothing else to do about it but just accept it and count on people to “come to their senses” when the war “ends”? Because “that’s just the way it is”?
You’ve never said that?
Not sure I remember him saying that, but I sure remember me saying that I strongly suspected based on history and popular opinion that if you got rid of detention, then the replacement would be a combination simply killing people before they could surrender in battle, including not but limited to via drones, and putting people without a trial in SuperMax prisons and SuperMax treatment, which are worse than Gitmo.
Considering that both of these worse situations have occurred (and both two US citizens) and that I forsaw both of them, I’m not sure that I could have supported a policy that in my mind inevitably led to something worse. For all the faults of indefinite detention, I do believe that killing is worse.
Whether this is John’s position or not (an argument I have absolutely no interest in joining), it is certainly a popular position of the political and chattering classes, and of their dull-witted fans.
the “John Theory of the Constitution”
I found his recent discussion of the 1st amendment particularly interesting. I don’t remember the exact words, but it was something along the lines of:
The first amendment doesn’t protect speech that is counter-revolutionary, so if you attend a speech where someone is talking about overthrowing the party government you are a counter revolutionary part of a criminal conspiracy and should be sent to the gulag jailed.
Something like that…of course it was only meant to apply to Muslims, or something.
I continue to find it interesting that you paraphrase vaguely-remembered things that are easily found and quoted using Google.
And then when it turns out your paraphrase was wrong on important points, you fall back on the fact that you admitted you weren’t really sure what was written. This enables you to smear your opposition without consequence, a typical Sophist tactic.
John posts are not easily found by Google.
It’s a matter of sheer quantity.
Google is really a pretty bad tool for searching something like Reason posts by someone like me or John.
The only thing I’ve ever made work is bookmarking. But you have to realize a post’s significance and bookmark it in real time. If someone posts something the significance of which only becomes clear when they contradict themselves later, good fucking luck trying to find that post using search.
I continue to find it interesting that you paraphrase vaguely-remembered things that are easily found and quoted using Google.
It was on the Rand Paul wants to put people in jail for going to speeches thread. It was not a single post, but a series. If you don’t recall it…maybe my comment was not directed at you.
As for your larger point: I find it odd that you didn’t google up a bunch of examples of this behavior on my part for me. (~_^)
It’s teh jooooss.
It’s a sad day for the Republic when insisting that the president actually, you know, get an authorization of force as kinda sorta suggested by the Constitution is seen as akin to open rebellion or creating a fifth column.
This. What to do? I think it’s going to take a “Million Pitchforks March”. 8-(
I hope when the revolution comes, we actually use pitchforks and torches. For the lulz.
You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. These people bust their ass; this is a hard job. Illegal war-making is the number-one occupation for politicians in this country. It’s the one job basically any politician can do and make a living on. The reason is because of the disregard of the Constitution.
It’s not a disregard for the Constitution, it’s all in how you interpret it.
The job of a constitutional lawyer, like our president for example, is to interpret the constitution in such a way as to benefit their client.
Depending upon the client, or who is in power, the exact same sentence or phrase can be interpreted to mean something completely different.
That’s the beauty of ‘Rule of Law’.
It dupes the people into believing they are ruled by impersonal law, when in reality they are ruled by the imagination of lawyers.
I don’t know a fucking Jew who would have the balls to say that.
Obama’s a Jew?
I heard he’s a Muslim.
But I’m half Jewish.
Wasn’t it Jesus Christ who said “blessed are the warmongers, for they shall spend shitloads of other people’s money for highly dubious goals, while wasting the lives of their young, and arousing the hatred of all nations, thus obtaining the gratitude of lobbyists and the adulation of sycophants”?
-jcr
No, I think the was the chairman of General Electric, but close.
‘As a spokesman for Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it during the Libya debate, the vote “sends an unhelpful message of disunity and uncertainty to our troops, our allies and, most importantly, the Gadhafi regime.”‘
Who was this “spokesman,” Dick Cheney? What is Obama’s slogan now, “Worse than Bush”?
If Obama sent out troops into Canada on a war of conquest, people could say the same thing. Not every military action is right, and we, the people, have a right to authorize such actions. It’s written down somewhere. Granted, I’m not sure Congress represents much of anything anymore, but without it taking action, one man can put this entire nation into war. One man. How is that democratic or even republican?
It’s OK for people to take to the streets and protest the war, as long as they do so vainly. You only become unpatriotic when actually start doing something to end the war.
SHUT UP! YOUR RIGHT-WING KOCH-WHORES JUST WANT TO TAKE AWAY MY REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS!!!!
When did the WSJ get into the warmongering racket?
-jcr
Kucinich’s wife is incredibly hot, therefore I’m willing to listen to any of his speeches which she attends.
Could we just cut out the middleman and get her to make the speeches?
I guess she’s alright if you’re into gingers. Not to mention that vegans smell weird.
How many of those 87 are congressmen from the 2010 class? Not really fair to call hypocrisy if they weren’t even around when Herr Bush was in office.
I imagine some of those that are pooh-poohing him for not getting congressional authorization would be willing to vote to authorize. But there is a principle, and an extremely important one at that, that needs to be asserted here. Allowing the president to engage in a military campaign in excess of 60 days absent at least tacit congressional approval is setting a dangerous precedent.
a demonstration of House commitment to U.S. forces in the field.
Nothing says “commitment to the troops” like randomly picking internecine disputes to intervene in.
When did the WSJ get into the warmongering racket?
Is this a joke?
Boehner has got to go. He is quietly leading to the dems getting back a majority in the house. He is not believable and is basically a good example of the problems in dc. what possible interest is it to his constituency in ohio that he not uphold the constitution regarding war making powers. None, it’s only in the interest of the big government gop pols who are biding their time in hopes of regaining the white house so they can wield the same stick. And what is it with the threat by boehner to maybe do something serious if obama doesn’t come and explain himself. Is there anything obama can say that will satisfy boehner in two weeks that he hasn’t said already?
The wsj is out of touch. The Tea Party will no longer tolerate war for war’s sake, like the GOP establishment has for decades. This has nothing to do with partisan politics.
Well that seems to make a lot of sense dude.
http://www.hide-your-ip.at.tc
“Eight-seven Republicans, complains the Journal, became situational isolationists simply because a Dem is in the White House.”
But is this not exactly the case?
Would not the voting pattern have been different if a Republican President were leading a kinetic military action in Libya?
Actually the vote outcome might have been the same, but the proportion of yeas and neighs flipped from GOP to Democrat
Unfortunately, you’re probably correct. However, one of the lingering effects of the Tea Party seems to be an increasing skepticism of overseas military action by rank-and-file Republicans. Or maybe I’m just being optimistic.
An unsigned WSJ editorial
as Max Boot blogged the very same thing in Commentary’s Contentions, my guess is that we have an author.
Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans, as violently against Hitler and Mussolini as the next one, but who are convinced that the present economic system is washed up and that the present political system in America has outlived its usefulness and who wish to commit this country to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of great national banker and investor, borrowing billions every year and spending them on all sorts of projects through which such a government can paralyze opposition and command public support; marshaling great armies and navies at crushing costs to support the industry of war and preparation for war which will become our greatest industry; and adding to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning, regeneration, and domination all to be done under the authority of a powerfully centralized government in which the executive will hold in effect all the powers with Congress reduced to the role of a debating society. There is your fascist. And the sooner America realizes this dreadful fact the sooner it will arm itself to make an end of American fascism masquerading under the guise of the champion of democracy.
not hayek
Thanks for the correction.
My mistake thanks.
John T. Flynn
Most American Presidents have used force without the prior approval of Congress, starting with Jefferson’s dispatch of the Navy and Marines against the Barbary pirates?not too far from present-day Libya.
Whoever the author of the piece (of crap) is can kindly go screw himself. Jefferson sending the Navy after a band of privateers who were openly preying on America’s international commerce is not the same as Obama dropping bombs on a country in the middle of a civil war being spearheaded by people we have next to no information about.
Can’t remember where I read it, but I believe there was some form of congressional authorization for Jefferson and Madison to go after the Barbary pirates.
I love it how the Democrats wail about “illegal wars” and then go into full denial mode when their own guy actually goes and prosecutes an undeniably illegal war.
You’re right. It wasn’t a formal declaration of war. It was named An Act for the Protection of the Commerce and Seamen of the United States, Against the Tripolitan Cruisers.
The long and short of the thing says America will protect its ships in the Mediterranean and if the Barbary Pirates fuck with us, we’ll fuck with them right back.
Missed this earlier.
WSJ are a bunch of duplicitous fucks? Shocker.
Glad I didn’t read the WSJ article in its entirety, or my head might have exploded. Thank you for summarizing the article so my head did NOT explode.
is good