The new, bi-partisan authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) introduced by Senators Kaine and Corker is billed as evidence that Congress is finally taking its Constitutional war-making authority seriously. This could not be further from the truth. Congress is about to grant the president "forever war" power and return to its slumber. Bad for America.
The new, bi-partisan authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) introduced by Senators Kaine and Corker is billed as evidence that Congress is finally taking its Constitutional war-making authority seriously. This could not be further from the truth. Congress is about to grant the president "forever war" power and return to its slumber. Bad for America.
The new, bi-partisan authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) introduced by Senators Kaine and Corker is billed as evidence that Congress is finally taking its Constitutional war-making authority seriously. This could not be further from the truth. Congress is about to grant the president "forever war" power and return to its slumber. Bad for America.
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams and Daniel good to see you.
How are you this morning Dr. Paul?
I'm doing very well and we're going to be talking about authority to go to war.
You'd think it had already been settled a few years ago.
When do we go to war?
Well the founders thought about it and they thought one thing for sure, never give the authority to the executive branch, not to the king.
It belongs with the people and that body that's closest to the people, which in our case was the Congress.
The Congress has the authority to go to war.
But that's been long time forgotten.
And of course, no war has, we haven't gotten into any war under declaration since World War II.
And we've been in plenty of war, almost perpetual war.
And we're going to talk about a new bill to replace some old recent bills about authority to use military force.
And it looks like it's going to legalize broader war, longer-lasting war, not knowing who the enemy precisely is, and making it essentially unlimited.
If we had trouble already, it's going to be much worse.
And the worst part about it, it's being done by individuals, to the best of my knowledge, are well-intentioned, and they see that they're trying to restrain the Congress.
I mean, the executive branch.
Congress is trying to get hold of this.
But it doesn't look that way, but they've done this before.
We've been stung before when you think about the war powers resolution after the Vietnam War in 1973.
That was sort of going to rein in the presidential power to wage war with that tragedy.
And of course, this happens a couple times in this century, you know, with 9-11 in Iraq.
And it's a mess.
It's a mess.
But unfortunately, it looks like what they're trying to do, and I'm sure there's some good intentions, it looks like it's just going to make it much worse.
You know, people ask me sometimes when I talk about our problems and say, well, what should we do?
What should we do?
Just read the Constitution.
That probably would be the solution.
But right now, that seems to be out of order.
Don't even suggest that the people and the various special interests behind the scenes like the way it is.
You know, you suggested, you mentioned the idea of the reforms that they have.
And that's always the case.
Remember with the Freedom Act.
It was written by the same person who wrote the Patriot Act, so that should be a little bit of a clue.
But remember, we were talking about this back when it was introduced, that this is a bad deal because what it does is legalize some of the things that they were doing under the Patriot Act that were illegal.
It's best to keep them illegal.
And I think this is the same thing here.
And there was actually a very good article.
I recommend it to people written by a senator from Kentucky, the name of Paul in the American Conservative magazine.
And he's really, I think, done a heroic effort to say, hang on, this is not what it's being sold as.
You know, don't believe the hype.
Read it.
So in his article, he points out, this just shows how absurd it is.
He points out everything that's covered.
Eight groups in six countries to begin with.
We're now going to declare war or authorize force against at least the following places and people.
Taliban, Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula, ISIS anywhere.
Al-Shabaab in Somalia and elsewhere.
Al-Qaeda in Syria.
Al-Nusra in Syria.
The Haqqani network in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Niger, Algeria, Libya, and Nigeria, and associated forces.
That is the open door for anything, anytime they really want.
But they didn't name a country because they want to be able to go into any country when they feel like it.
And the so-called backup for the Congress is that after, I think it's 48 hours, the president's supposed to tell them that they have sent troops to a new country, but then they have 60 days to settle it, or they can vote to take away this authority.
But the irony is even the vote, instead of the Congress voting to opt into the war and say you have the right to go to war, the executive man starts the war and the Congress has this right to opt out of the war, but there's a hooker there too, because what they're saying is the majority can get together, House and Senate, and pass a bill and say, you have to stop.
We don't want you to be in ABC countries.
We don't want you to have war.
You come home.
But the president can veto the bill.
And then either house can override the veto.
So it makes it very, very tough that they have, it says you need two-thirds of the vote of the Congress in order to stop the war after it was illegally started.
And they claim this is reining in the power of the executive branch.
It is so destructive, but it's not brand new, this whole process.
This has just been around for a long time, and people just don't pay attention to how things work in Washington.
Talk about a poison pill, that two-thirds.
That is incredible.
That's brazen.
You know, in Senator Paul's article, he also calls for a full debate with all sides considered.
Those last three words are so important because I know you remember, I certainly remember all those years on the Foreign Affairs Committee where there would be a hearing and it would be three neocons talking about how great things were.
Remember endless visits by Fred Kagan telling us how the surge was great, it was working terrific, it's fantastic.
The war is going to be won soon.
Over and over, there's never a debate featuring a non-interventionist and a neocon or anything like that.
It's all predetermined.
So the senator's right for saying all sides considered.
Well, you know, in the committee hearings, they'd give me my usual five minutes, which I wasn't quite able to convince them not to do it.
But when the vote came up, the going into Iraq, you know, ordinarily the sides are split.
There are some Republicans on two sides and Democrats on two sides, but the leadership and the majority are all for it.
They usually designate a certain amount of time for the anti-forces.
And they didn't designate any time for us who objected to it.
Somebody complained, and I think instead of giving me the usual two minutes or something, I think they gave me five or six minutes and that was it.
And then they went on to preach the war.
So once the momentum is there, it's very hard to stop.
And then they rant about, well, we need to protect our troops.
They're already over there.
And it's patriotic to do this.
It's American exceptionalism.
We have this obligation and all that stuff.
And yet it's always a disaster.
I don't know when the last time was that we were, if you measure war since World War II, I don't know which war anybody could brag about.
Republicans and Democrats have supported all the wars ever since World War II.
You mentioned the issue of not really focusing on countries.
I think that's also critical because if you think about this authorization, this is a sovereignty-killing measure.
This tells every other country on earth potentially, you are not a sovereign nation.
You are subject to the whim of the United States President.
If that's not breathtaking, I don't know what is.
Imagine we do this sometimes if the shoe were on the other foot.
And there was a virulently anti-Chinese group operating in California, and they were opposing the Chinese government, and the Chinese government viewed them as terrorists.
And they sent in some drones to kill them, violating our sovereignty.
We would go nuts and rightly so.
But we're claiming here the right to operate anywhere in the world, forget national sovereignty.
Don't you dare shoot down our planes when we're bombing you.
The whole thing.
It's really shocking.
You know, and a lot of people will come to me and they say, yes, if we don't do this and give this some authority, what are you going to do?
How do you solve this problem?
Of course, I already mentioned, well, one thing is, is they could pay attention to the Constitution, but that's not likely to happen.
You know, all of a sudden they're not going to be constitutionalists.
There's too many people who have something involved here and they're going to benefit from it.
And then the second thing Congress could do instead of only having the right to opt out of the war rather than voting to get involved, if they get tired of it, and I did a little bit of this after such a tragedy in the 60s, just defund it.
Take away the money.
If the people woke up and the Congress woke up, no matter what the executive branch was going, if you take away the money, fortunately that's available, but it's essentially never used.
And then also, there should be, you know, the exposure of the profiteers, the military-industrial complex, the people behind the scenes who promote these wars, and they have an agenda.
Not only the domestic war profiteers, but also the profiteers in the international sense, the other countries who want us to be involved.
Sometimes it looks like we're hired guns.
Oh, yeah, this country likes us to do this.
This country wants us to do that is going on right now.
And we go along with it.
But then you have another thing to contend with that is an obstacle, and that is the propagandist, the official people in this country, part of the deep state, who own the media.
I mean, how many times have we turned the TV on lately?
I don't think anybody's going to hear some warnings on this in any of the major networks.
Some of these cables will, but they're not going to be warning us against this.
So the vehicles are there, but those Americans, including us, are pretty frustrated of having an ability to counteract all these forces.
But ultimately, I believe that the attack has to be with the people.
And that, of course, is what our goal has been, to wake up people, to have them understand there's nothing to be embarrassed about, non-intervention, and mind our own business.
And it is patriotic to stay out of war.
And it's patriotic to stay out of wars that are evil, undeclared, and for special interest.
So there are the vehicles, but it needs an awakening by the people.
I hope someday we can get a little bit of credit for making at least the effort to try to wake the people up as to what's going on.
And you know, you mentioned how the media will cover this.
What they'll do is they'll usurp our position.
Awakening the People00:05:02
They'll say, Congress is finally stepping up to assert its role.
You know, when in reality, you don't have to look far in the fine print.
But, you know, I was looking through the fine print, and a couple people have, a couple of people suggested that the bill does this, and I was skeptical, so I went in and I went into the trees and I read this.
I'm going to read you, if you don't mind, section 5A, paragraph 2, under the designation section.
Listen to this and tell me what you think.
Not more than 30 calendar days after the date of the enactment of this joint resolution, the president shall designate all organizations, persons, or forces other than those listed in paragraph 1 that the president has determined are associated forces covered by this authorization.
Persons, I underlined several times.
Essentially what this is saying is the president can declare war on individuals.
It doesn't say non-U.S. persons.
I looked through the bill.
It doesn't say non-U.S. persons.
I thought people were being alarmist when they said this grants the president the authority, even more authority to attack and kill American individual citizens.
And it's very conceivable that we could be considered an associated force because what we do is we talk against this.
But that is notorious for most governments, even in our government, because look all the way back to the Civil War.
Presidents put Americans in prison for that.
World War I was just as bad, World War II, because under these conditions, civil liberties can't be protected.
That's why this psychology of perpetual war, when war is going on, and you might say, well, we can conceive, concede a little bit of this because we're fighting World War II, and they're going to take away some of our civil liberties.
and they're going to give them back to us.
And look at the abuse of the Japanese Americans in World War II.
At least we gave it back to them.
But I think that's shifting.
Even though the temptation is always to abuse the civil liberties of the people who are fighting these wars for liberty, you know, they tend to forget that they're the people that are going to suffer the most.
And they have been.
And under these conditions, you read the list of where they can go.
And then there's a vagueness.
Any place, anytime, as long as they want, the Congress are lapdogs and they vote for the money.
But the attack on civil liberties will be sustained.
Just think.
If we'd have been in a real hot declared war in 19 or 2001, let's say over 9-11, we had an enemy and we went to war.
It was announced.
It was over in a year.
You know, that would have been it.
But no, it was perpetual war.
It was terrorism.
We declared war against terrorism, global war on terrorism.
And this is an expansion on the global war of terrorism, which guarantees that there's going to be more patriot acts, more spying on Americans, and more of this.
Well, we can't tell the enemy what's going on in our foreign policy.
Turns out, we don't get to know either, so we become part of the enemy.
That is very dangerous.
That is.
And I just wonder what the associated forces are, you know.
But if I would just close on reminding what we said yesterday, August 18th for the RPI summer conference.
Still looking for co-sponsors.
We'll have some information.
You can send me an email to learn how to be a co-sponsor and take advantage of some of the nice perks.
The other thing I want to mention is I was invited and will be speaking at the Mises Institute in Fort Worth, Texas on the 2nd of June.
I'm talking about military Keynesianism, all those evil people who make tons of money off of scaring everyone to death.
Dr. Paul, I'm really looking forward to seeing our old friend and colleague Jeff Deist and the rest of them in Fort Worth.
So Mises.org for more information on that one.
Now they're not going to have enough room up there.
You're going to be there.
There'll be an overflow crowd.
They'll be leaving.
But I do want to close and just re-emphasize this talk about authorization to use military force.
When governments in our government does this and bring this up to restrain war, they're usually doing the opposite.
When they write these bills, either they're very careless or somebody behind the scenes, somebody in the individuals writing it, the staff, put in there all the loopholes in there that they can get around.
And then conveniently, the Congress generally ignores it, and the presidents don't even like these things.
You know, Nixon vetoed the war powers resolution.
And even now, the most hawkish members in the Senate have not signed on to this.
And the leadership, Ryan and McConnell, opposed bringing these votes up because they believe, believe it or not, they believe this is restraining too much.
Even if they have to be answerable to, say, and give the Congress a chance to get a two-thirds vote to get them to quit.
They think that's way too much over at the top of taking power from the president.
So there's a lot of reasons why this thing fails.
Why Defense Spending Fails00:01:13
And I think we need to be alert to what's going on.
We need to become very attuned to the subject of peace and understand why it's the obligation of the people if they want to live in a peaceful society.
And that is send the message to the Congress.
Those individuals who keep voting for all this keep voting against all this militarism.
You know, they say, oh, no, this is defense.
We only vote for money for defense.
That's a bunch of baloney.
There's very little defense money in there.
It's all militarism, expansionism, antagonism, and setting the stage for a much more difficult war to come.
And I think that it's unfortunate, but it usually ends with a bad situation.
That is, the country finally has to go bankrupt before the people wake up.
But anyway, we're going to continue our effort to wake the people up and say that the non-interventionist foreign policy is the way to go.
It's been tried before, and the countries that have done it, they've been very successful.
And there's no reason in the world that we can't do that in our country and set a standard for the world because I believe that is the way to achieve peace and prosperity.
Thank you very much for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.