If the president does not have to go through congress but simply notify them 42 hours ahead of time that he is going to blow someone up, then what is the point of even having congress be the ones to formally declare war when we have’t formally declared a war since WW2 IIRC?
Sure, they could just impeach him. But isn’t there any stipulations for the president to carry out this act besides, notifying congress 42 hours ahead of time and having troops removed within 60 day period?
Edit: War Powers Resolution - Wikipedia
Edit2: So I’m confused, didn’t the founding fathers intend for Congress to have the only constitutional authority to implement war efforts overseas? How is any of this even constitutional to begin with / actual law?
This has been a constitutional dance the president and congress have been going through for fifty years or more.
The president is commander-in-chief (so he gets to tell the military where to go and what to shoot). Congress gets to declare war. There is a big gray area between those two things.
Congress has passed laws dictating what the president must do. Most presidents have ignored it or only paid it lip service with the notion congress doesn’t have the power to do that.
The impasse has never been adjudicated and neither side has tried to force the issue. So there is a lot of posturing and mostly congress seems content to let the president do what he wants and then bitch about it after the fact.
So I’m assuming congress will give themselves absolute power over whether or not military action is used. At least to me, I believe the reason why democracy “works” so good is because you have the opinion of multiple people before taking action. Having action taken based on the opinion of a single individual is dangerous when it affects the entire country or world. I think this was something that should have been changed before I was born.
But on the flip side what if congress is indecisive? I’m not entirely sure about whether or not congress approved nuking japan since they already declared war, and how far declaring war extends in terms of destructive power used, but maybe the sitting president should have some say so over military action. Really I’d rather have a group of people in charge of a decision instead of one, but indecisiveness has historically fucked over a lot of people.
No, they probably won’t. The not-president’s party usually bitches when the President uses force without Congressional approval, but most presidents in recent years have done it, and life goes on anyways. That’s all Tim Kaine was doing. There’s a well-established precedent that he’s wrong.
Oh goody, a mildly-worded letter from, if I’m counting right, about 20% of the House of Representatives, “requesting” that the president seek an authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) from Congress before ordering additional military force in Syria. Yup, he’s really stepped in it this time. :rolleyes:
Are you trying to justify their position are you simply stating they’re the lack of awareness?
Not sure but you’ve always seemed to attempt to make arguments in favor of the right even when you’ve not positioned yourself to take the blunt of an attack on their position. You’d be pretty good at PR for a shitty company.
The constitution stands in the way of congress doing that.
The president is commander-in-chief of the military. Congress can declare war.
Clearly congress cannot arrogate complete power over the military. They’d need a constitutional amendment to do that.
There are two sides here too when it comes to what is the best system.
World events can move fast. Much faster than congress can come to grips with. We need to be able to respond quickly and forcefully and decisively in some situations.
On the flip side it is scary to give one person the ability to start a war by telling the armed forces to go pew-pew someone on a whim.
As mentioned congress has never pushed this. Neither has the president. This has been true regardless of who is in the White House (republican or democrat).
So we have been in this gray area for decades and both sides, bitching aside, have done nothing to change it.
That sounds a lot like doing nothing and hoping the people will elect competent intellectuals with the best interest at heart. I think that’s even scarier than having a single person in power. People are stupid, especially when politicians and media are propagating political narratives to distract from certain ideas and create falsehoods.
I believe society in general needs to progress, not accept things as they are. If we lived in a perfect society, and we had no law regarding to murder. Should we wait until someone gets murdered, or should we have made laws preventing murder to begin with? That’s my perspective on these sort of issues.
This is one of those instances where “both sides do it” is pretty much true (pdf link). There have been some instance where a recent president did seek a Congressional Authorization of Use of Military Force, but those seems to be the exception. The US military has been pretty damn busy over the last few decades, often without a Congressional grant for use of force.
Jefferson sent frigates to the Barbary coast without a formal Congressional Declaration of war, and you cant get much more “Founding Father” than Jefferson.
No one declares war anymore. “War” is a total war now, not just a few skirmishes.
You’re rather leaving out that the pirates had declared war on the United States, and under Jefferson’s direction, the Navy was authorized to act in self-defense. That’s actually remarkably consistent with modern international law.
Later, he asked for, and received, from Congress the second non-declaration of war authorization for the use of military force. His message to Congress was on December 8, 1801, and Congress acted on February 6, 1802.
If anything, Jefferson’s actions are a pretty good guide of how things OUGHT to work, but currently do not; as opposed to being a justification for why the Constitution is routinely ignored.
Not to mention that to the extent Jefferson was a “Founding Father”, he was in France (1784 - 1789) when the Constitution was put together (1787/88). He gets credit for the DoI, but not the Constitution.
Jefferson and Adams were the ones nominated to write it, and the two of them argued a bit over who would do it in the end. Adams’ reasons for not writing it won out; he wasn’t as trusted as Jefferson, and he thought that a Virginian, being from the most powerful colony, should lead. (He also said that Jefferson was a much better writer.)
*Historian Richard B. Morris in 1973 identified the following seven figures as the key Founding Fathers: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.[2][3] Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin were members of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence. *