Reading about President Obama’s war-mongering campaign with regards to his proposed military strikes against the Syrian government, I was shocked to see his administration make the disturbing claim that POTUS (President of the United States) reserves the right to push the button with or without a formal declaration of War by Congress.
I’m shocked, because we are not dealing with some fake cowboy dumbass that somehow fell off the turnip truck and landed in the Oval Office. Rather, Obama is, according to the biography of his own life, as well as independent accounts, a former constitutional law prof at the University of Chicago or lecturer, to be more precise (having worked as a lecturer myself, I can tell you there is a world of difference between the two in the academic world). At any rate, one would hope that as a graduate of Harvard law, he would be familiar with the US Constitution’s article 1, section 8 which clearly states that “Congress shall have the power…to declare war.”
So either Obama was the world’s worst constitutional lawyer, or he has conveniently ignored the fundamentals of US law since becoming the most powerful man in the world. I for one, am betting on the second being the case.
It’s not the first time the constitutional lawyer in him has been suppressed for the sake of politics. In fact, Obama has made a maddening habit of doing just that, when it suits his administration’s agenda, whether on the issue of fighting terrorism, violating the privacy of US citizens and foreigners, or harassing journalists.
When it comes to fighting terror, through the use of state sanctioned killing of innocents through the CIA’s devastating drone program, Obama really takes the cake. He’s actually upped the ante from the Bush years by approving a massive surge in drone attacks, mostly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But also in Yemen, where the president made a dubious defense of the summary execution by means of hell fire missile, without trial, or any form of due process, of an American teenager who had the misfortune of being the son of known Al-Qaeda terrorist, Anwar al-Awlaki.
Consider that the Department of Justice, on the orders of the president, secretly subpoenaed the e-mails and personal phone records of Fox journalist James Rosen for his alleged involvement in leaking classified information to the public. The White House completely disregarded article 1 of the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of the press in its blatant attempts to intimidate the press with absurd charges of criminal conspiracy against members of the fourth estate.
All part and parcel of the new imperial presidency that long ago begun undermining the separation of powers intended to prevent the concentration of too much powers in the hands of one person or institution, but continues its alarming growth under President Obama who used to try and reassure the public by pointing to his background as an expert on the US Constitution.
