Bringing the United States a New War

The United States military is the most powerful military in the world. Almost any American will tell you: with great power comes great responsibility. What gives?

(A.K.A. Unfortunate Decision Number One)

I’ve decided to write a series based on current events, called the Republican Congress’s Series of Unfortunate Decisions. The bad decisions coming out of the Republican Congress are legion, and it’s impossible to focus on all of them at once. We do that to some degree in our podcast Right and Freedom, but it sometimes gets complicated tying them all together into a cohesive theme-something else we try to do. Since we also have this substack, let’s take a little time here to get into some of the bad decisions a little (not too much) deeper, limited by my self-imposed eight-hundred-word limit.

For the first event, I’d like to discuss the bombings in Venezuela. Now, you are probably sitting there reading this, saying to yourself: wait, what? Isn’t that a bad Trump decision? How did that make the list?

I’m glad you asked.

Well…I’m glad I asked for you, anyway.

There’s a reason that Congress must declare war, and the President does not have the unilateral power to do so. With all of the saber-rattling happening these days, it’s probably good to take a thorough look at why we wouldn’t want the President to be able to declare war. The declaration of war catapults a political decision that could be determined by negotiation and mutual respect for the rule of law, to a might-makes-right conflict between two nations. The idea that a war solves anything is laughable. Anyone can take a long, hard look at the Middle East and come to the same conclusion. And so, when this nation was founded, we took the very prudent step of requiring Congress to allow military intervention.

The unfortunate truth is that Congress has allowed President after President to use the military in ways that, in a time of nation-states, would have been called wars, but are now deemed conflicts or military actions. Effectively, we have dwindled the Congressional oversight of war to the point of almost non-existence. In fact, in our fervor to find an enemy in response to the 9/11 attacks, we gave the President at the time many powers of a wartime president, during a time of relative peace. This has also included the ability to spy on Americans, among other toxic things, like turning the United States of America into a surveillance state, which it still very much is. As an aside, though the Patriot Act technically has expired, the infrastructure established to spy on Americans is still alive and well. (Repeal efforts are underway, though with Republicans in control of the government, and it being shut down, repeals are at about the priority you might expect from Republicans.)

However, Congress does still have the power to rein in the President from military actions. In fact, if Congress decided to do so, they could end all of the military actions and little side shows, like blowing up poor fishermen in other countries. Oversight is their responsibility, and that oversight is to make sure that the Executive Branch is executing according to their will. Think of it this way: Congress is the boss, and the President is the hired hand who’s supposed to take care of the fields, water the plants, feed the animals, etc. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, anyway. The Republican Congress has it backward: they think they work for Trump.

Their boss is supposed to be the American people.

This whole blowing up another nation’s people is nothing short of an Act of War. Can you imagine if some other nation were blowing up fishing boats off the coast of Maine?

This would be an Act. Of. War.

So I ask you this: how is an Act of War different from a Declaration of War? Only within the ocean of negligence springing from a do-nothing Republican Congress can these two things be considered at all different. Ask your average American, and it’ll take a minute for them to sort out any difference. Both are means to the same end: roping the United States into a war with a foreign power and getting more Americans killed.

This is why I chose number one on my list of Unfortunate Decisions to be Bringing the United States a New War, and why I lay it at the feet of Republicans in Congress. Maybe the war isn’t here yet, but that’s definitely not for lack of trying. It’s Congressional responsibility to keep us out of wars that don’t serve America’s interests, and Trump, through his actions, is working toward starting one, intentionally or otherwise. The consequence of his actions will be indistinguishable from the consequences of declaring war, and thousands to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans may die in a needless conflict that our Republican Congress is simply too pathetic to properly oversee.