M. Johnson, Sorry, but it's the Bush administration's war if wars actually "belong" to a particular administration. WWII for example started during FDR's administration and was continued in the Truman administration. If it wasn't "illegal" in 2005 it's not "illegal" in 2009.
On Dec 4, 2:44 pm, "M. Johnson" <[email protected]> wrote: > Epicenter of Mendacity: Obama's Illegal War Against AfghanistanThu, > 12/03/2009 - 14:10 dlindorff > Nobody in the corporate media mentions it, but the war in Afghanistan which > President Barack Obama just ramped up by 50% this year, with the dispatch, > first of 17,000 troops last spring and now with another 30,000 troops, to > begin deployment on Christmas, is being fought on the shaky legal basis of a > hastily passed Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) voted by > Congress back in October 2001, more than three years before Obama was even > elected to the Senate. > That AUMF was the handiwork of President George W. Bush and Vice President > Dick Cheney, and it was rammed through House and Senate with almost no debate > in the wake of the 9-11 attacks and then used to justify most of the > subsequent assaults on the Constitution and Bill of Rights that are still > haunting America and the world today. > While Congress saw the 2001 AUMF as an authorization to launch an attack on > Al Qaeda in Afghanistan (an attack that quickly toppled the Taliban > government, but that famously failed to crush Al Qaeda, thanks to its being > called off half a year later so troops could be shifted to a new war in the > making against Iraq), Bush and Cheney interpreted it as a “declaration of > war” in a “global war on terror,” which they claimed had no border, no end, > and which they even tried to claim extended to within the boundaries of the > US. > So anxious were Bush and Cheney to be permanent wartime generalissimos, > unfettered by Constitutional constraints, that just minutes before the > measure went to the Senate for a vote, according to then Senate Majority > Leader Tom Daschle, they sought to add the words “in the United States” after > the phrase “appropriate force” in the language of the resolution. As Daschle, > who wisely refused their request, notes, “This last-minute change would have > given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just > overseaswhere we all understood he wanted authority to actbut right here in > the United States, potentially against American citizens.” > The point though, is that the 2001 AUMF was in fact an authorization to use > military force togo after terrorism. It was not an authorization to conduct > afull-scale war against another nation, or to become enmeshed in acivil war > in another nation, which is what is going on in Afghanistan today. That, in > fact, is why even Bush felt he needed a second AUMF to authorize his invasion > of Iraq. > President Obama is trying to finesse this by falsely claiming, with a > straight face, that Afghanistan is part of the “epicenter of the violent > extremism practiced by al Qaeda” in the world. He is deliberately tryingand > getting full support from the complicit corporate mediato conflate the > Taliban with Al Qaeda to justify his absurd claim, too, by also falsely > claiming in his speech that several unnamed “extremists" have been > apprehended in the US who were sent here recently from some ill-defined > terror central inside of Afghanistan. > The truth is that not one act of terrorism outside of Afghanistan has been > attributed to the Taliban of Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban, while > admittedly a brutal, reactionary, fundamentalist group of militant Islamists, > are not global jihadis bent on wreaking havoc in the Western world or even in > the rest of the Islamic world. They are a domestic Afghan military and > political movement that is seeking to return to power in Afghanistan. > Al Qaeda, the organization that was the target of the Congressional AUMF > resolution in 2001, has long since abandoned Afghanistan for safer, greener > pastures. > This being the case, Obama’s war in Afghanistan, and especially his decision > to intensify it dramatically, is being conducted illegally, without any > actual authorization from Congress, as required by the Constitution. > If the president wants to mire the US further and more deeply in a civil war > in Afghanistan at this point, aimed at defeating the Taliban in that country, > he should at least be required to obtain a new resolution in Congress > authorization that action. > As a constitutional lawyer, this president knows that he is acting illegally, > which is why he was so careful in his speech to West Point cadets on Tuesday > to make the bogus claim that Afghanistan remains the epicenter of terrorism. > But governing by lies, as we already have been for the last two presidential > terms, is no way to govern, and the American people will eventually realize > that they are being lied to again. Indeed, the fact that a majority of > Americans, according to polls, want to see the Afghan War ended, shows that > even given the biased pro-war media, and the dredging up again of the hoary > 9-11 attacks, most people understand this on some level. > The Bush/Cheney administration did much to undermine and wreck Constitutional > government during their eight years in office. Many people had hoped that > Obama was serious when he said during his campaign that he wanted to restore > Constitutional governance if elected. But by his latest move, committing the > US to a full-scale war in Afghanistan on the basis of a lie and without any > proper war resolution from Congress, he has joined his predecessor in further > debasing both the Constitution and language > itself.http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/?q=node/425 -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more.
