[OATHKEEPERS.ORG  Sept.11.2014]

 

House Republican Introduces Bill That Would Give President 'Dictatorial Powers' To Wage War

 

This article was written by Nick Bernabe and originally published at D.C. Clothesline

 

Following the clear failure of the 'War on Terror', launched by George W. Bush following 9/11, the US will re-up it's efforts, which have only seemed to cause an increase in terror operations around the world.

 

Members of Congress, including many within the President's own party, are looking for more blood to be spilled in the Middle East. The two main fronts in the 'War on Terror' have failed horribly. Iraq is now a failed state, where instability following the US backed installation then deposition of Saddam Hussein has served as a breeding ground for radical Islamists, angry at the West's decades-long corporate imperialist designs on the region. Add to that horrible equation a government propped up by US and other foreign interests that alienated a large portion of the Iraqi people. A third of the country has now fallen to radical elements, despite GW and Obama declaring only a few years ago that Iraq was won.

 

Afghanistan, destined for a very similar fate, is already falling back into the hands of the Taliban - our Soviet era allies Reagan called "freedom fighters," turned sworn enemies, turned quiet diplomatic partners. Yeah I know, it's confusing. Read this article we posted earlier today for an in depth look at the origins of the Taliban and how America helped create them.

The war on terror has done nothing but increase the threat from terrorism. Whether from foreign policy blowback or forcing the decentralization of terror groups, the fact is that ISIS and many other groups are more emboldened and powerful than ever, despite trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives lost to combating them. Due to the US strategy of targeting leaders for assassination rather than taking the wind out of terror movements by understanding how and why they are able to recruit new fighters, America's anti-terror tactics have only made terrorism harder to defeat. Every time a leader is assassinated in a drone strike, the organizations split and become autonomous, making them harder to find and to predict. But these clear foreign policy failures have not slowed down Congress' and the Administration's march towards war.

 

After America ruined Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and countless others, it's now setting it's sights on Syria, and to a lesser extent, Ukraine; both allies of Russia.

 

Here is where things begin to get scary. Congress is just about ready to cede it's power to declare war. While this isn't something new, considering the last time America actually declared war was in WWII, it will give dictatorial powers to the Executive Branch to throw the country into any war as long as it's against some form of terrorism (which is a tactic, not a group, army, or country). According to legislation announced yesterday by Congressman Frank Wolf, it will authorize,

 

"to use all necessary and appropriate force against those countries, organizations, or persons associated with or supporting terrorist groups, including al Qaeda and its regional affiliates, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, al Shabaab, Boko Haram, and any other emerging regional terrorist groups that share a common violent extremist ideology with such terrorist groups, regional affiliates, or emerging terrorist groups, in order to eliminate all such terrorist groups and prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States or its allies by such terrorist groups, countries, organizations, or persons."

 

This is a dangerous, open ended, ceding of control away from the people, and into the hands of the President and his unelected foreign policy "experts".

This will effectively take Congress out of the equation of waging war as long as the Executive Branch says it's against terrorism. But Rep. Frank Wolf goes even further. According to The Daily Caller,

 

He also plans to introduce legislation repealing the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which mandates that only Congress can declare war, and requires the president to notify Congress at least 48 hours before committing U.S. forces to military action. Wolf's bill says that the resolution "has not worked as intended, and has added to the divisiveness and uncertainty that exists regarding the war powers of the President and Congress."

This legislation, which is similar to a bill proposed by war monger in chief John McCain earlier this year, will essentially remove all war powers from representatives and turn the President into a de facto emperor on foreign policy.

 

While most presidents since WWII have committed treason by blatantly ignoring the War Powers Act, there now seems to be an appetite in Congress to repeal the act and make waging unjust wars even easier for the President and his advisers.

 

Obama already violated the War Powers Act when he unilaterally toppled the Libyan government headed by Gaddafi, and we all see how well that worked out.

 

Americans should get serious about politicians violating the constitution such as that War Powers Act and have these 'leaders' prosecuted to fullest extent of the law. The consequence if we don't will in all likelihood result in WWIII and millions more dead innocent people.

 

In the short term, this renewed push in the corporate media and the government for more war on terror should be resisted by every American. It has already been admitted that there is no strategy to combat ISIS; and the best prospects for peace in Iraq, as we have noted before, is to allow Iraqis to form an organic resistance to these ISIS brutes. Any US intervention, as seen in every single anti-terror operation we've been involved in the past two decades, will only result in more instability and more of a threat of terrorism. Not to mention more Americans dead and billions more in debt.

 

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4 Responses to "House Republican Introduces Bill That Would Give President 'Dictatorial Powers' To Wage War"

• 1
  Cal Says:
  September 11th, 2014 at 3:20 pm "Congress is just about ready to cede it's power to declare war. "
• They cannot LAWFULLY (legally) cede anything to another branch. But what they will be doing is OPENLY admitting to TREASON against the USA and her people.
• Plus 28 C.F.R. Section 0.85 Terrorism is defined as "the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives".
• That would also qualify as another CRIME they would be committing along with treason, perjury, etc.
• IF we allow it, we will be slaves, OK may as well disband as well as other groups. Start drawing up charges, adding the names after we see who is willing to commit those crimes. Yes, we do know that they already have committed other crimes, and some have already committed treason and terrorism against the USA.
• There are more ways to fight battles then just with weapons.
• Judge Thomas M. Cooley: "Legislators have their authority measured by the Constitution, they are chosen to do what it permits, and NOTHING MORE, and they take solemn oath to obey and support it. . . To pass an act when they are in doubt whether it does or does not violate the Constitution is to treat as of no force the most imperative obligations any person can assume."
• Joseph Story, "Commentaries on the Constitution": "Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings and blood of their ancestors; and capable, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence...Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them."
• Dr. Edwin Vieira: "This has nothing to do with personalities or subjective ideas. It's a matter of what the Constitution provides...
  The government of the United States has never violated anyone's constitutional rights...
  The government of the United States will never violate anyone's constitutional rights, because it cannot violate anyone's constitutional rights. The reason for that is: The government of the United States is that set of actions by public officials that are consistent with the Constitution. Outside of its constitutional powers, the government of the United States has no legitimacy. It has no authority; and, it really even has no existence. It is what lawyers call a legal fiction.
• ... the famous case Norton v. Shelby County... The Court said: "An unconstitutional act is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties. It is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed."
• And that applies to any (and all) governmental action outside of the Constitution..."
• What are the defining characteristics of a limited government? They are its disabilities; what it does not have legal authority to do. Look at the First Amendment... What does it do? It guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion. But how does it do that? I quote: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press" etcetera. "Congress shall make no law;" that's a statement of an absence of power. That's a statement of a
  disability." (End quote by Dr. Vieira)
• Then we must replace every dingle one of them who has NOT fought for the US Constitution as they are REQUIRED by the position they occupy.
  Americans would have had to understand and enforce their Constitution. You notice I say Americans, not the Congress or the Supreme Court, because who is the final arbiter of this document? [holding a copy of the Constitution] It is not Congress, and it is not the Supreme Court. It is "We the People." Read the thing. How does it start? "We the people do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States"; not "we the politicians," not "we the judges." Those people are the agents of the people. We the People are the principals.
• The doctrine is very clear that, being the principals, we are the Constitution's ultimate interpreters and enforcers. You don't have to take my word for it. Let's go back to the Founding Fathers...
• The Founding Fathers were profound students of law and political philosophy, their knowledge unequaled by any today. Their mentor in that era was William Blackstone, who wrote Blackstone's Commentaries, probably the most widely read legal treatise of its time, certainly here in the United States. What did Blackstone write about this subject? He wrote, "Whenever a question arises between the society at large and any magistrate vested with powers originally delegated by that society, it must be decided by the voice of the society itself; there is not upon earth any other tribunal to resort to." We the People are the Constitution's ultimate interpreters. Dr. Edwin Vieira, http://www.constitution.org/mon/vieira_03225.htm
• Madison said: "That all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from the people. That government is instituted and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty and the right of acquiring property, and generally of pursing and obtaining happiness and safety. That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their government whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purpose of its institution."
• Speaking for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Hughes also dealt a death blow to the emergency powers doctrine. Counsel for the government's opponents relied on [Ex Parte] Milligan, arguing that an "emergency does not increase constitutional power nor diminish constitutional restrictions." 
•  
• Yielding to their appeal, the Chief Justice retreated from the near-endorsement he had given the emergency powers doctrine in [Home Building & Loan Association v.] Blaisdell. "Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power," he declared. The Court conceded that such conditions might well require extraordinary remedies, but that did not "justify action which lies outside the sphere of constitutional authority." Those who acted under authorization of the Constitution, the Court said, were not free to transcend the limitations upon the power that it granted merely because they believed that more or different power was necessary.
• Thomas Jefferson: "The government created by this compact (the Constitution) was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party (the people of each state) has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress."
• Alexander Hamilton: "Every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid."
• James Madison, Federalist 46, 315-23: "The Federal and State Governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, instituted with different powers, and designated for different purposes... They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone; and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other. Truth no less than decency requires, that the event in every case, should be supposed to depend on the sentiments and sanction of their common constituents."
• James Madison: "The ultimate authority resides in the people, and that if the federal government got too powerful and overstepped its authority, then the people would develop plans of resistance and resort to arms."