@misko27
Yeah.
America hasn't declared war since WW2.
All the wars since then - which weren't technically wars, but they really were- were defying a incredibly simple and clear role of our Congress.
Are you familiar with the War Powers Resolution? It seems to imply otherwise, especially given that it is seen by many (including every single President since it was passed), as
overstepping the bounds Congress has on control of the Military and dipping into unconstitutional status.
The President commands the military and can reasonably be assumed to be allowed to do anything that is legal. Congress has the legal right to declare wars. You can't say "well really they were wars", since you don't have the right to define war. If the constitution defined wars to be "anything that involves fighting people", you'd be right that it would be unconstitutional. But it doesn't. The Constitution doesn't define war at all. Congress does. The Supreme Court had three oppurtunities to decide the legality of the war in Vietnam, and refused each time.
Congress has checks on Presidential power in this area, but very few are automatic (one of them being, of course, the War Powers Resolution). These checks include Congresses legal right to decide how to fund the military, which it could obviously use to put a stop to any behavior it did not approve of but didn't wish to declare illegal for whatever reason.
Let me put this a different way: why would Congress shy away from declaring that the President had overstepped his bounds if they didn't approve? Up until recently, Congress jealously guarded its power. They've approved of it in the past, which, as I said in my earlier post, is essentially the same as writing a law that makes it so unless there is some specific reason why they need to do it explicitly.
Author
Topic: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: T+0 (Read 1423997 times)