Letter to the Editor: Demand more
BY Bruce J. Ackerson, Stillwater
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
5/22/12 at 2:59 AM
For our founders, presidential power to wage war smacks of royal power. So our Constitution grants Congress the power to wage war. Congress slowly abdicated this power to the president, because the "president must act quickly." Besides, war decisions complicate political life and threaten re-election.
Acting quickly without debate produces wars that don't end quickly; our longest war wages on.
We have the world's strongest, most advanced, best-funded fighting force. Presidents throw this "might-makes-right" solution at many problems. Yet our poor, backward, inferior opponents battle on and on, much like our patriot forefathers, against far superior British imperial forces.
Presidential war objectives lack transparency. That we preemptively invaded Iraq to eliminate weapons of mass destruction is considered a lie by most. YouTube shows George W. Bush disclaiming Osama bin Laden as the reason for war with Afghanistan. What then were the objectives? Establish a pipeline in Afghanistan for Enron? Make an imperial outpost in the Middle East with the world's largest embassy? Restore the dollar exchange for the banks? Capture world oil reserves? Open oil fields to western oil, which now fails in free-market competition?
Are "U.S. interests" only corporate interests? Demand that Congress use its constitutional right to declare war and be held accountable. Demand more for our defense tax dollars than the total lack of defense experienced on 9-11. We might share more foreign policy complaints with our "enemies" than we dare think, because the president's National Defense Authorization Act thought-police capture our data streams too. Occupy!
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