ALL PRESIDENTS NEED TO FOLLOW THE US CONSTITUITION

 

…Washington Post’s conservative columnist, George Will

This pure conservative goes after President Obama, but conveniently ignores past conservative US presidents.

First, I want to declare that regardless of what political party a US president represents, I believe that any decision to drop bombs in another sovereign country should require the approval of the US Congress.  Even though that’s the way our founders wrote the rules, unfortunately for decades, whomever has been president has for the most part, used their broad Article II powers to circumvent going to Congress for that approval and support.  The last time an actual declaration for that approval was performed by the US Congress was on June 5, 1942, when, to clarify legal ambiguities, Congress declared war on Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. 

Therefore, with all the past military actions that have occurred in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Balkans, Grenada, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and a host of others, it was 72 years ago since the US dropped a bomb on another country “legally”, and according to the US Constitution.

But now, the conservative Post pundit, George Will, is going after the current president for his going after ISIS and for the president’s past military efforts in Libya and Syria.

And to make things interesting, Mr. Will has now even gone against a lawyer from the Dubya Bush Justice Department, Mr. John Woo.  This is the same Justice Dept. attorney that had justified for the Bush-Cheney administration that “Waterboarding” was not an act of torture.  

(BTW: Mr. Woo is surprisingly today, a current full professor at the highly liberal, University of California – Berkeley…really.)

Mr. Woo had previously said. “….that because presidents are vested with all of the executive power of the federal government, they are empowered to initiate military hostilities to protect the national security,” even if there is no danger of “an imminent attack.”  Yoo also argues that the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq authorizes today’s force, “against the continuing threat posed by and inside Iraq.” 

A final comment from Lawyer Yoo was that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force’s preamble says “the president has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent terrorism”.

Obviously, Mr. Will doesn’t agree with Mr. Woo on this one, but the current president does.

Mr. Will’s response is: “This is extravagant. The Constitution’s text, illuminated by the ratification debates, surely does not empower presidents to wage wars, preventive as well as preemptive, against any nation or other entity whenever he thinks doing so might enhance national security.”

 

..Our United States Constitution

So, now Mr. Will is a constitutional lawyer?  But where was he when the Bush-Cheney mob was cherry-picking intelligence for going after Saddam in Iraq?

Mr. Will has now brought in what he describes as “…an excitable liberal professor from the Yale Law School”, Professor Bruce Ackerman.  This professor stated that “…nothing Bush [has] attempted remotely compares in imperial hubris with Obama’s assertion of unilateral war-making authority.” And the professor also said, “Obama’s administration has not even published a legal opinion defending unauthorized war against the Islamic State because no serious opinion can be written.” 

There is apparently a real battle going on today between the ideologies of the American president, the liberals and the conservatives. 

The liberal professor Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School has noted, “the killed thousands of people and an effected regime change,” in Iraq did not constitute “hostilities.”  While, on the other side, Professor Ilya Somin of George Mason University School of Law says, “Claims that large-scale air attacks don’t count as warfare were specious when the administration trotted them out in defense of its intervention in Libya in 2011; and they have not improved with age.”

So, which is it?  Which ideology is correct?

Per Mr. Will, the 2001 AUMF preamble is not a law and is a rhetorical overture.  According to this conservative, “all preambles are generally lacking in the force of law, particularly when they baldly assert a dubious interpretation of a presidents’ Article II powers”.  According to Mr. Will, regarding war with the Islamic State (ISIS), the Constitution requires what prudence strongly recommends congressional authorization.

In this instance, I agree with Mr. Will, but not because he is right and the president is wrong to take his current position. 

I agree with Mr. Will because it’s what all the previous and current presidents should do before they decided to drop a bomb on anybody. 

Mr. Will needs to stop being a pure conservative, and become an American pundit that supports the US Constitutions for all current and future US presidents. 

 

For Mr. George Will personally, it would be more appropriate for him to stop attacking just the presidents of the opposition party, on any given subject.

Copyright G.Ater  2014