If you allow your government to declare war on indefinite objects and actions you allow your government to declare permanent war. This is fucking dangerous.
And that is the real issue. We are now in permanent war. The constitution is a dead letter.
Wasn't it helpful to have a "liberal" Democrat in the White House to make the final stroke of the pen and abolish the constitution? Could you imagine if Bush had done this? The outcry? But with Obama in there the left is largely silent, and the right are ever-obsessed with irrelevant "culture war" crap. Culture war dog-whistle terms distract Republicans like moving objects distract cats.
Not saying Bush was innocent of course. Just pointing out the continuity of the decay of America's ideals regardless of which party sits in power.
> And that is the real issue. We are now in permanent war. The constitution is a dead letter.
> Wasn't it helpful to have a "liberal" Democrat in the White House to make the final stroke of the pen and abolish the constitution?
I literally do not remember any president in my life who hasn't been accused of making the last stroke of the pen and abolishing the Constitution. And we've been in "permanent war" since, at least, the beginning of WWII (admittedly, you wouldn't notice it was anything other than normal war until well into the Cold War, but the "permanent war" isn't something that started with Obama, or even with Bush the Younger's "War on Terra".)
> Vietname, Iraq I, Korea, etc. were declared but they were declared on specific enemies and thus had sunsets.
The closest thing to a declaration of war in Vietnam was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which, while it mentioned Vietnam in its preamble, didn't mention any specific enemy in its operative clauses, and was, in fact, completely open-ended. The operative text of the resolution follows:
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled, That
the Congress approves and supports the determination of
the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all
necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the
forces of the United States and to prevent further
aggression.
Sec. 2. The United States regards as vital to its
national interest and to world peace the maintenance of
international peace and security in Southeast Asia.
Consonant with the Constitution of the United States
and the Charter of the United Nations and in accordance
with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective
Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore,
prepared, as the President determines, to take all
necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to
assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast
Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in
defense of its freedom.
Sec. 3. This resolution shall expire when the President
shall determine that the peace and security of the area
is reasonably assured by international conditions
created by action of the United Nations or otherwise,
except that it may be terminated earlier by concurrent
resolution of the Congress.
> Exactly. And, perhaps more importantly, neither was the Cold War used to justify so many actions that would only be allowable in actual war time.
Actually, it was. In fact, many of things that are happening now and are the focus of that complaint were also done during the Cold War, to the point when in one of the brief moments of reactions against those extremes at the end of the Nixon/Vietnam era where the Cold War excesses had reached a perceived (local, at least) maximum, attempts were made to put legal limits on them in. E.g., the War Powers Resolution and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Wasn't it helpful to have a "liberal" Democrat in the White House to make the final stroke of the pen and abolish the constitution? Could you imagine if Bush had done this? The outcry? But with Obama in there the left is largely silent, and the right are ever-obsessed with irrelevant "culture war" crap. Culture war dog-whistle terms distract Republicans like moving objects distract cats.
Not saying Bush was innocent of course. Just pointing out the continuity of the decay of America's ideals regardless of which party sits in power.