Okay, I don’t mean this as a debate-which is why I’m putting it here-is there a reason no war has been “declared?” I mean, we’re pretty much at war, for all intents and purposes. So does Congress intend to declare it on the Taliban? Or are they waiting?
I’m guessing that the reason is that war is declared on governments recognized as legitimate (e.g., the Third Reich, the Japanese Empire) and not on organizations that are not recognized as legitimate governments regardless of the functions they serve in their native country.
Well, the problem is, there’s nobody to declare war on. We don’t consider the Taliban the legal gov’t of Afghanistan, so we can’t really declare war on Afghanistan. We can’t declare war on Bin Laden, because you can’t declare war on a person.
Since we (the U.S.) don’t recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, there isn’t a sovereign entity to declare war against.
As many other threads have discussed, formal declarations of war have gone out of style and we haven’t seen one since the Soviet Union declared war on Japan in 1945.
Congress already passed what is likely to be the closest thing to a formal declaration of war you will get, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which was signed into law by the President on September 18.
What I really hate about this situation is those anal-retentive people who claim that we’re not at war because Congress hasn’t formally declared war. Hmmm… we’ve got planes bombing the country, ground troops conducting raids… looks like a war to me. And yet we’ve got a whole slew of morons saying “But it’s not really a war because they’re not calling it one.”
A rose by any other name… :rolleyes:
because of the war powers act , that the US president can deploy troops and forces for up to 60 days without an official declaration of war
The *Authorization for the Use of Military Force * Act passed by Congress and signed by the President doesn’t have a time limit.
oh yeah damn , forgot congress agreed just didn’t say i declare war on you etc
The Authorization does say:
Somebody else is going to have to wade through the War Powers Act to figure out exactly what that means, though.
I know various Congresses and various Presidents (somewhat independent of party affiliation, I believe) have never really seen eye-to-eye on the whole WPR thing, but unless something goes drastically wrong, I doubt this is the time when anybody of either branch of government or party would be inclined to press the issue.
Declaring war is quite passe nowadays. I remember reading an article by a Queen’s Counsel (a very senior barrister) which said that the Gulf War was not a war or alternatively an illegal war because there had been no declaration of war.
Silly man. International law is made by convention. the convention since WW2 is not to formally declare war anymore.
You don’t have to declare war on a country or government thereof.
We declared war, for example, on the Barbary Coast Pirates (from the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Triploli…as my fellow Marines will recall)…
The precedent is there. Let’s stop arguing about it and exterminate the vermin.
Since when do presidents pay attention to the War Powers Act?
Actually, the U.S. never declared war on the Barbary Pirates. However, the nations that sponsored the pirates: Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers at the time had declared war on the U.S.
The U.S. Navy and Marines fought a series of fairly small-scale battles in an attempt to keep the Barbary Countries from asking for an extremely high amount of tribute (aka ransom) from the U.S. to prevent the pirates from capturing American sailors.
And if you wish to draw a parallel between that conflict and today’s, let’s just hope that it ends much more quickly. The troubles with the Barbary pirates started in 1785 and didn’t end until 1815 when a treaty with Algiers was signed. And there were still problems until the French occupied Algiers in 1830.
Of course that started a whole new set of problems …