About the 1973 War Powers Resolution

"A national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."

Some of my readers have proposed that, pursuant to the 1973 War Powers Resolution, President Trump possesses full and discretionary power to use military force, and need only inform Congress that he is commencing military operations 6,000 miles away because he and his advisors think it’s a good thing for someone.

The context of the War Powers Resolution was President Nixon’s ongoing war in Vietnam and US Air Force’s Operation Freedom Deal of bombing Cambodia. This was ten years after the CIA and its mafia cronies assassinated President Kennedy, thereby placing this nation under the de facto rule of the national security state, under which it has existed ever since.

Nevertheless, Clement Zablocki in the House and Jacob K. Javits in the Senate made a valiant attempt to reassert Congressional oversight by proposing the Resolution. The key elements of the law are as follows:

§1541. Purpose and policy

(a) Congressional declaration

It is the purpose of this chapter to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations.

(b) Congressional legislative power under necessary and proper clause

Under article I, section 8, of the Constitution, it is specifically provided that the Congress shall have the power to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution, not only its own powers but also all other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

(c) Presidential executive power as Commander-in-Chief; limitation

The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

The key point here is that the President can initiate military operations at his discretion—without prior Congressional approval—only in the case of a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

In my opinion, the Resolution is still too broad, because we know from the phony Gulf of Tonkin incident how easy it is for the president and his pals in the military to grossly exaggerate an “attack” and to fabricate an “attack” altogether. Nevertheless, the War Powers Act placed some Congressional limits on Nixon’s ability to continue military operations in Vietnam and Cambodia, and it marked the beginning of the end of both wars.

In a recent commentary of Trump’s Iran war, Judge Andrew Napolitano stated:

Even the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which requires reporting to the Congress within 48 hours of the onset of presidentially initiated military hostilities, contemplates the use of the military when a threat to the U.S. is imminent. This raises two issues.

First, the administration has not articulated with credibility any imminent threat. The secretary of defense has said, at best, that Iran has ambitions to attack the U.S. one day. That is hardly an imminent threat. An imminent threat must articulate a rational basis rooted in immediacy and grounded in the emergent need to protect U.S. national security. It cannot be speculative.

Second, the statute requires that the president report in writing the reasons for war to the full Congress so it can approve or disapprove. Trump sent a political diatribe to Congress with no articulation of immediacy, but he did so only after he had his secretary of state report in secret on immediacy to the Gang of Eight — the congressional and intelligence committees’ leadership from both parties.

But the Gang of Eight is not the Congress. And because these reports were made in secret, the eight recipients of them cannot inform their congressional colleagues or the media or their constituents. What kind of representative government is that? What did the secretary of state tell these eight members of Congress?

Several readers have made comments suggesting that they either don’t understand or don’t appreciate that the entire point of the Constitution is to LIMIT the power of the Executive to take actions that could have terrible, unforeseen consequences for We the People.

Only about 0.4% of the U.S. population serves in the armed forces. It has been a very long time since the majority of Americans have felt the consequences of our government’s wars abroad. Even when those consequences are devastating for U.S. servicemen, as I noted in my piece 450,000 U.S. Soldiers Diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury Since 2001, the majority of Americans lack awareness of these terrible consequences.

In my opinion, this has created an extremely dangerous situation in which our people have been lulled into believing that there are no grave consequences of waging war abroad and killing thousands and even hundreds of thousands of people. For example, what was the point of blowing a police station in downtown Iran to smithereens? How was a killing a bunch of cops—and everyone living in the nearby buildings—going to achieve anything but make ordinary Iranians hate us with a burning passion?

Most Americans have no idea of the evil of which the U.S. military-industrial complex is capable. I wonder how many of my readers are aware of the fact that, during the 1980s, the U.S. government approved licenses allowing American suppliers to export biological materials, including Bacillus anthracis (anthrax), Yersinia pestis (bubonic plague) and botulinum toxinto Iraqi agencies to develop biological weapons for use against Iran during the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran War.

How many of my readers know that, during the same war, Israel supplied American-made TOW anti-tank missiles to Iran, most notably as part of the clandestine Iran-Contra affair in 1985–1986.

Going back further into history, how many of my readers know that, during World War I, Max Warburg was the financier and banker for Kaiser Wilhelm II in Germany, while his brother, Paul Warburg was the financier and advisor to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, playing a central role in creating the Federal Reserve System and serving on its first Board of Governors from 1914 to 1918? Same bankers profiting from both sides of the same war.

How many of my readers know that Stalin developed his war industrial manufacturing base almost entirely with the assistance of U.S. industrial and financial firms?

How many of my readers know that Ford and General Motors produced military vehicles for the German Wehrmacht during World War II, and that firms like ITT and IBM provided communications and logistical equipment?

Throughout human history, most of the moral justifications offered for war are pure humbug. Wars are waged because ambitious men want to expand their power, wealth, glory, and dominion.

The impulse to wage wars of choice recalls Satan’s temptation related in Luke 4:5-6, when the devil displayed all the kingdoms of the world, claiming authority over them and offering them to Jesus. All Jesus had to do was bow down to worship Satan.

I don’t know if Satan is an actual supernatural being or merely a metaphor for the latent evil that lurks in every human heart and that may, under certain circumstances, be activated and spread like a malignant contagion. Whatever the case may be, it seems to me that Satan is now fully in charge.