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Dec. 24, 2019 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
19:47
War and the Rogue Presidency, With Ivan Eland

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Time Text
Congress's Loss of Power 00:09:15
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is co-host Daniel McAdams.
Daniel, good to see you.
How are you this morning, Dr. Paul?
Doing fine, and we have a special guest today, a friend of ours and a friend of liberty.
So I don't think we're going to get into any squabbles here.
We'll have general agreement that less government is better.
I bet we can agree with that.
And he's a noted author and a real expert on foreign affairs.
And we've known him for a long time.
Matter of fact, I interviewed him for, what, 30 minutes or an hour or something on C-SPAN on Recarving Rushmore, a very well-known book about talking about the presidents that Ivan might have put up on Rushmore.
Ivan, welcome to our program today.
Thanks for having me on.
I want to put up your book because we're going to be talking about that in a little bit and give it a little bit of publicity.
And this is your most recent book.
You have about six or seven major publications, but this is the one that we want to talk about.
And the name here is War and the Rogue Presidency.
Well, that sounds pretty good, but I'm going to be interested in asking you a few things about this because you made a statement that I talk about a whole lot because you've done so much work on rating the presidency, who are the good guys and the bad guys, and how many had libertarian leadings and all this.
But then you also say it isn't only the presidents.
They're at fault.
But really, who's at fault is the Congress.
And you spent some time in the Congress spending some time on committees on foreign policy.
So why don't you elaborate a little bit on that, on how you assess this, that yes, the presidents are important, but ultimately, you know, it's the Congress and Congress.
And then one step behind that is who puts those members of Congress into office, and it's a reflection of those individuals as well.
Yeah, I think, you know, we always concentrate on that the president is taking more and more power, you know, especially after 9-11, you know, because we remember the recent presidents more.
But if you go back in history, this all started probably with William McKinley in the Spanish-American War.
He became the first real modern president because although Teddy Roosevelt gets the credit, McKinley really started talking to the national press at the time over the heads of Congress.
And then, of course, we had several wars, big wars, in fact, World War I, World War II, and then the long Cold War.
And during this period, Congress really abdicated a lot of its authority, especially in foreign policy, but also, I would argue, in the budget area as well, which includes foreign policy, but includes, of course, more areas than that, domestic policy.
So we see three primary areas, I think, and that's what this book is about, is the congressional abdication of the war power.
In other words, we don't declare war anymore, which is the Congress is supposed to do.
And we didn't after Truman didn't do it in the Korean War.
We really haven't had any declarations of war since World War II.
So Congress has really abdicated that power.
We have the power of treaties, which we don't have too many treaties anymore.
We have executive agreements.
And of course, the treaty standard of approval is two-thirds of the Senate, and that's a very high bar.
And so we don't do those anymore because they're too difficult to get through a divided Congress.
So we just do executive agreements, which sometimes are not submitted at all for congressional approval, but nonetheless bind the United States.
Or we go on the 50-plus one majority rule in both houses, which is a lower standard than the two-thirds in the Senate.
So we don't do many treaty.
The treaty power has been diminished.
And then, of course, the budget, ever since the early part of the 20th century, after World War I, we got an executive budget.
And that seems like a good idea.
And maybe it is.
But of course, what came along with that is that the Congress abdicated some of its budget authority.
And now the Congress sort of whittles it around the edges on the massive budget document which the executive puts forward.
So in those three areas, the war, the treaty, and the budget, I think those are three major areas where Congress has given up its power, at least some of its power, in each of those areas.
Daniel has a question for you.
You know, it's really funny.
And by the way, welcome to the show.
We've been friends for a long time, and I'm really always happy to see you on the program.
But I find it particularly humorous, I guess is the word for it, maybe something more.
But we just finished witnessing the end of last week the impeachment of President Trump for the abuse of power.
The three of us sitting here would probably cheer because they've all abused their power.
But what does Congress do while they're impeaching him for abusing power?
They give him every penny he wants in the NDAA.
They give him all the authority to spy on us in the Patriot Act.
They essentially give him the authority to go to war with Iran by stripping the Kahana and Getz amendment out of the NDAA, which explicitly prohibits the use of force against Iran without a declaration of war.
What about this disconnect?
What's happening?
Why is Congress this way?
Well, of course, you know, we focus on the big things that the press covers, and certainly they've covered impeachment really a lot to the exclusion of everything else.
But you're right.
Back in the shadows, the abdication continues, and we see massive defense spending and other spending just be, you know, go through in a bipartisan manner because everybody wants to seem like they're getting something done and not wasting all their time on impeachment.
But unfortunately, these items are increasing the president's power and also increasing the reach of the federal government with yet more spending.
I mean, so far in the administration, we haven't had a small government as far as spending goes.
There has been some deregulation, which I think is a good thing.
But as far as the spending goes, the government just seems to get bigger.
Yes.
And I mean, I have a question relating to the economic policies that we generally follow that can lead to problems.
And you mentioned that, I think, in your writings, that, you know, sanctions aren't exactly the best thing to build up good rapport with different countries, tariffs and this sort of thing.
So economic policy seems to be very important.
And we had a little program the other day and said the direction we were dealing with Iran and Pompeo saying, well, we have to go and stop this guy.
And his statement is, Iran must respect its neighbor's sovereignty.
So we talk about sovereignty and we talk about our way and we get involved in economics.
Can just speak to the fact that economics cannot be separated, I think, from the foreign policy because they either love us or hate us.
And eventually I think they're going to hate us more because we're going to be running out of money.
Yeah, I think you're right.
We can't separate economics from foreign policy because, of course, we're the biggest users of economic sanctions against Iran, against Russia, against other countries.
Venezuela are just three that we put them on.
They rarely have their ultimate goal of changing the politics in countries or overthrowing the government or getting them to change their political system or something.
That's the political goal of sanctions.
Sometimes they can have a drastic economic effect on everyday people.
That's an economic effect, but you're supposed to be using that economic effect to get to the political goal.
And if you don't get to the political goal, which is what usually happens, all you're doing is making the people who are already victims of whatever regime it is even more of a victim because they're certainly there you're taking away their livelihoods and diminishing their economic growth and that sort of thing.
And so I think Iran is a particular case where if we're going to end endless wars in the Middle East, and I think that's a great thing to do, then we probably shouldn't be ratcheting up the economic sanctions pressure against Iran.
So that's kind of a contradiction in the policy.
Solutions for Intelligence Oversight 00:09:23
Good.
Ivan, here's something that caught my attention that you mentioned in the book, and I think it's a great idea, and I'd like you to elaborate more if you don't mind, because I think it's something we definitely all agree with, but a lot of people don't really understand properly.
You say that the war powers resolution should be repealed, and that sounds good, but again, a lot of people don't understand that.
So maybe if you can elaborate on your rationale behind that.
Well, many of the pro-executive power people want it repealed so the executive can do whatever they want.
But in reality, the executives haven't really paid much attention to it, or at least a limited amount of attention to it.
And so it's sort of been used to justify the executive putting troops in harm's way and then having get them out after 60 or 90 days, which the original goal of the war powers resolution was laudable because it was trying to restrain Richard Nixon and other future presidents after the debacle in Vietnam, Southeast Asia.
However, it's been sort of perverted over the years, and I think it sort of gets us away from what we really need to do, and that is we need to very, the Constitution is very simple.
The Congress needs to declare war when we send troops overseas to fight, and we're not doing that anymore.
And these resolutions all the time that we get, like the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the authorization for military force in 2001 after the Afghanistan war, in one way or another, they've been widened out so that the executive can do whatever they want.
A declaration of war says that Congress, you know, here's a declaration against this group or this country, and here are the parameters that you can go.
And it's a much more emphatic document.
It also, it triggers all sorts of laws that are triggered by during wartime, legitimate wartime.
Course, this would also probably cut down the number of smaller or unnecessary wars that we undertake.
But the Congress, that's another, you know, as I mentioned, the war power has been abdicated, and many people, many representatives in Congress don't like to vote on war because they think they'll be on the wrong side of it.
Either they'll vote against it and the war will be at least tactically successful, like the first Gulf War, or the opposite will occur, and so they'll vote for a war that goes south, such as the Iraq War.
Many of the Democratic candidates are still dogged by support for the invasion of Iraq when they probably should have voted against it, most certainly should have voted against it.
You know, so much of what we have done in Washington, they continue to do is when they name a piece of legislation, it always sounds very, very good.
And I developed a rule, and I don't think Daniel ever argued with me.
This is, if you look at the title, they're going to be doing exactly the opposite.
So the War Powers Resolution was supposed to restrain and make it more difficult.
It made it easier to have a 90-day war than they never could leave it.
So that's one thing I had learned over the years.
But I wanted to ask you about the experience you had in Washington.
You spent essentially a year and you worked on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
You also worked on the Budget Committee and you testified various times, even in the Senate.
What was the consequence of that?
What did you learn from that?
Did your attitudes change at all?
Was it worse than you ever dreamed?
Or does it just say, well, that's the way I expect it.
I just understand how that system works a little bit better.
But was the experience worthwhile for you?
Well, I think it was worthwhile because you really get an idea of what the system does well and what it doesn't do well.
And I think I was involved in intelligence oversight for a period of time, not only in the Foreign Affairs Committee, but when I worked for the Government Accountability Office.
And so we would go to these intelligence agencies, and I would just think, boy, this really screams for more congressional oversight.
So we actually tried to push for that.
But of course, a lot of the members of Congress don't really want to know what goes on in these intelligence agencies, even though they really should, because there's a lot of mismanagement.
There's a lot of policy that could get us into a larger war, you know, covert action, that sort of thing.
And so I became a big advocate of more congressional oversight of the intelligence agencies as a result of this.
So I think the experience is worthwhile because people who criticize the government without actually knowing how it works or what the strengths and the weaknesses, and there are a lot of weaknesses of the system.
I think you really have to know the problems of the system and at least come up with some solutions.
That's what I try to do in the book.
I try to come up with solutions for Congress to take back some of its Article I constitutional power.
And certainly the Congress was originally supposed to be the dominant branch of government.
That's why it's Article I of the Constitution.
And it's a mere shell of what it should have been over, and it was for a long time until it started abdicating power, which I date to the early 20th century, starting with all these wars.
The president took power, more powers during these wars, never gave them all the way back, the old Bob Higgs ratchet effect.
And I think that's what we're battling now.
But it's very good to know how the system works.
And I think people who've been in the system are probably the best reformers because they know where the bodies are buried, if you will.
Well, I've always supported more oversight, especially when it comes to monetary policy and the CIA.
But I was never enthusiastic to think this is in itself going to solve it.
But I think information is important because, quite frankly, the more oversight I got and the more I knew, the more I was convinced that the solution is to abolish so many of these harmful organizations.
Daniel.
I just have one other thing.
There's so much we could talk about.
But you know, a lot of people complain, oh, these books are out, nobody has any solutions.
But you do have some real concrete solutions.
And the last one we mentioned was a good one.
But here's another one.
This is from the summary.
And I'll just read it out loud, Ivan, if you want to elaborate on it.
That's great.
If not, don't worry.
But I think this is great.
Here's three things that Congress would do that would be great.
Congress would establish a statutory charter for the intelligence community, outlaw the covert destabilization of other governments in peacetime, and require that funding for intelligence agencies be made public.
Those three things will change a lot, and it's not that big of a deal.
So I salute those suggestions, Ivan.
Well, yes.
I mean, I think the first thing we need to do is restore more oversight over the intelligence community and really more congressional oversight over the government.
Because you remember the founders created a system of three branches of government, not necessarily to be efficient in the short term.
I think it's more efficient in the long term, but it's to avoid tyranny.
And I think we have the tyranny of the executive branch.
And this is not necessarily a specific criticism of Trump because we've gone a long way to get to Trump.
And I think that we need an institutional pushback.
And I agree with you.
Maybe the solutions are to get rid of the Fed and to get rid of covert operations and make the intelligence community actually collect intelligence, or the CIA especially collect intelligence instead of destabilized foreign governments.
So you may want to take away functions and not do them anymore or take away entire government agencies such as the Education Department, Commerce Department, the Energy Department, et cetera.
Maybe the federal government shouldn't be doing those things since those functions aren't in the federal Constitution.
I think we ought to bring back the 10th Amendment as an active, active thought process so that we can say, well, let's go to the, do we really need these agencies doing what they're doing at the federal level?
They have no charter to do such.
Like the FBI really doesn't have a very good charter for what it does.
It's a federal law enforcement agency.
But that's another example of where we might want to change something drastically.
But I think the first thing is the existing system.
I think we've got to get Congress back in the game, oversight, and then say, well, how do we, if this isn't working, let's go to the root of the problem and start cleaning house, getting rid of agencies, functions, etc.
Appreciating The Interview 00:00:48
Ivan, I want to tell you we appreciate very much for you being with us today.
And I know our audience is going to be very pleased with the interview.
But I want to put your book up again for them to get a close look and find out where it's available.
I want to give you a chance, Ivan, right now to say how viewers may contact you if you have a website or where's the place to go and purchase this book.
Well, of course, you can get it at Amazon.
That's probably the most efficient place to buy it.
But you can also get it on our website at the Independent Institute, which is www.independent.org.
Very good.
And thank you very much for being with us.
I want to thank all our viewers for tuning into this very special program.
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