Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

The United States Supreme Court should recognize the standing of citizens to challenge the constitutionality of presidential wars. It is our last best hope to regain the Republic. Over the past century, we have become dictatress of the world through a toxic combination of presidential usurpations and congressional derelictions. Our glory is no longer liberty, but domination and force.
In addressing war, the Constitution’s makers painted in prime colors, not pastels or chiaroscuro. Every participant in the drafting, debating, and ratifying of the document understood that under Article I, section 8, clause 11, only Congress was empowered to cross the Rubicon from a state of peace to war. The sole exception was presidential power to “repel sudden attacks.” Presidential wars were anathema for reasons James Madison, father of the Constitution, related to Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence:
“The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.”
Even Alexander Hamilton, the most ardent proponent of a muscular presidency, in Federalist 69 applauded the Constitution’s exclusive entrustment of the war power to Congress.
Despite the constitutional clarity, Congress has yielded or surrendered its war power to the President. It began with the Korean War in 1950. The surrender has not divided the major parties. Both Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate recoil from the responsibility for deciding on war or peace in the manner of a dog retreating to its kennel when danger appears. The Members are highly risk-averse professional politicians. They calculate that the safest political posture is to pass the buck to the President, but carp at the commander in chief if the war goes south—irresponsibility more to be marveled at than imitated.
At present, presidential wars are ongoing in seven countries: Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. There are additional presidential wars against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Qaeda everywhere on the planet.
Congressman Walter Jones (R-N.C.), on behalf of himself and as many as three dozen other House Members, has written at least five (5) letters to the House Speaker asking for debate and votes on these presidential wars. Each and every letter has been completely ignored. Congressional leadership does not want a vote. Neither does the majority of the rank and file.
In 2013, Congress balked at President Barack Obama’s request for a vote to commence war against Syria over suspected use of chemical weapons. But in September 2014, President Obama unilaterally began bombing Syria anyway ostensibly to degrade and destroy ISIS in a war with no discernable endpoint. Congress did nothing about the presidential usurpation.
In 1999, Congress voted down a declaration of war and an authorization for the use of military force in Kosovo. President William Jefferson Clinton, nevertheless, conducted a 79-day bombing and cruise missile campaign. Congress did nothing to defend its war prerogative.
The eagerness of Congress to surrender its war power to the President does not cure the flagrant violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers. It constitutes a structural Bill of Rights to protect the American people from tyranny. The Supreme Court said as much in Boumediene v. Bush (2008). Justice Robert Jackson, chief Nuremburg prosecutor, also elaborated in Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer (1952) that, “[T]he Constitution diffuses power the better to secure liberty.”
Since Congress is in pari delicto with the President, however, the best strategy for enforcing the Constitution’s prohibition of presidential wars is citizen suits against the President in federal courts. According to the Declaration of Independence, citizens have both a right and duty to throw off despotic governments. A citizen’s right to challenge the tyranny of presidential wars in federal court seems a lesser included right.
The life of the law, however, has been power rather than justice. Legal theories bend to accommodate the establishment—the power elite. Federal courts have generally denied citizens standing to challenge the constitutionality of presidential wars to avoid upsetting the multi-trillion dollar military-industrial-counterterrorism complex. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes lectured that, “The power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully.” It matters not that the war is more ill-conceived than Athens self-ruinous attack on Syracuse in 415 B.C.
But the precedents against citizen standing are unconvincing.
The United States Supreme Court declared in Flast v. Cohen (1968) that the gist of the question of standing is whether the party seeking relief has alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions.
Citizen-Plaintiffs clearly have deep personal stakes in escaping the calamities of presidential wars not in self-defense.
War impoverishes and oppresses the citizenry. Abraham Lincoln elaborated: “The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”
The presidential wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone have squandered a staggering $6 trillion in exchange for more upheaval and international terrorism—the worst investment ever made in the history of mankind. The lives of Americans would have been much improved if that sum had been dedicated to building or upgrading schools, roads, bridges, airports, water treatment facilities, or other infrastructure.
War aggrandizes executive power and crushes individual liberty. A nation is free to the extent the executive is removed from the war power. James Madison explained:
“In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man; not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
Hence it has grown into an axiom that the executive is the department of power most distinguished by its propensity to war: hence it is the practice of all states, in proportion as they are free, to disarm this propensity of its influence.”
Alexander Hamilton added in Federalist 8:

“Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.”
And Alexis de Tocqueville echoed in Democracy in America:

“All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it.”

Thus, presidential wars against which Madison warned have crippled liberty. The President plays prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any person on the planet the Commander in Chief decrees is an imminent danger to national security based on secret, unsubstantiated evidence. On his say-so alone, the President spies on the entire population to gather foreign intelligence. Military commissions supersede Article III civilian courts in the prosecution crimes that are not international war crimes. Persons are detained indefinitely without accusation or trial. Secrecy displaces transparency in the conduct of public affairs. The President invokes state secrets to frustrate judicial redress for the constitutional wrongs of government, including assassinations, torture, and kidnappings.
Cicero was right. “In time of war, the law falls silent.” Perpetual presidential wars signal the end of the rule of law and the reduction of citizens to serfs.
War further endangers citizens by risking lethal blowback. The 9/11 international terrorist murders can be traced to President George H.W. Bush’s war in 1991 war to expel Iraq from Kuwait. The President’s ulterior motive was to protect Saudi Arabia and its oil from the clutches of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Thus, our troops remained in Saudi Arabia after Saddam had surrendered.
Osama bin Laden’s two fatwas before 9/11—in 1996 and 1998—threatened the United States with jihad because we were occupying Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, the two holiest places of Islam, and we were strangling Iraq. The fatwas said nothing about hating the freedoms American citizens enjoy.
The Orlando Pulse nightclub murderer suggested at several points in communicating with the police that his motivation was to stop the United States from killing Muslim women and children in Syria and Iraq.
The most convincing evidence of blowback fueled by our multiple presidential wars in the Middle East and South Asia derives from exchanges between United States District Judge Miriam Cederbaum and convicted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American.
Judge Cedarbaum asked whether Mr. Shahzad intended the bombs to explode. Oh yes, Shahzad told her. He explained that he chose Times Square on a Saturday night so he could maximize the mayhem: “Yes. Damage to the building and to injure or kill people. But again, I would point out one thing in connection to the attack, that one has to understand where I’m coming from, because this is... I consider myself a mujahid, a Muslim soldier. The US and the NATO forces, along with 40, 50 countries, has attacked the Muslim lands. We...”
Cedarbaum interrupted: “But not the people who were walking in Times Square that night. Did you look around to see who ‘they’ were?”
Shahzad: “Well, the people select the government. We consider them all the same. The drones, when they hit...”
Cederbaum: “Including the children?”
Shahzad: “Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don’t see children, they don’t see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It’s a war, and in war, they kill people. They’re killing all Muslims.”
Cederbaum: “Now we’re not talking about them; we’re talking about you.”
Shahzad: “Well, I am part of that. I am part of the answer to the US terrorizing the Muslim nations. I’m avenging the attacks because the Americans only care about their people, but they don’t care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die.” 

Recognizing citizen standing to challenge presidential wars and entering a declaratory judgment against one or more presidential wars would end the Supreme Court’s role in holding the President accountable for the usurpations. If voluntary compliance with the Court’s decree was not forthcoming, the responsibility would lie with Congress to impeach and convict the President of the high crime and misdemeanor of defying the ruling, and remove the President from office.
We can ask no more or less from the judicial branch.

Follow Bruce Fein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brucefeinesq

Original: Huffington Post

Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

The United States has become a multi-trillion dollar presidential warfare state shattering our liberty-centered constitutional universe for which a steep was paid by the Founding Fathers.
Gratuitous presidential wars have spiraled the national debt past $20 trillion; spawned indiscriminate government spying on “not-yet-guilty” citizens in the name of foreign intelligence; and, subordinated civilian justice to spurious claims of military necessity, for instance, limitless presidential power to play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any American the President decrees is an imminent danger to national security based on secret, unsubstantiated evidence forever shielded from external review.
At present, the United States is fighting presidential wars in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) everywhere on the planet without congressional declarations of war as required by Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution.
Presidential wars are unconstitutional relics of King George III’s monarchy. Alexander Hamilton elaborated in Federalist 69:
“The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.”
Four decades ago, a President said, “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” That scorn for the law provoked articles of impeachment and resignation. Today, when the President echoes that scorn, Congress yawns.
To restore constitutional governance and liberty as our glory, every Member of the United States House of Representatives or House candidate should be required to sign the pledge appended below:
 
No Presidential Wars Pledge
Whereas war is too important to be left to a single individual or group;
Whereas James Wilson, during Pennsylvania’s debates to ratify the United States Constitution, spoke for every participant in the drafting and ratification process in declaring: “This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress, for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large;—this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives; from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion, that nothing but our national interest can draw us into a war;”
Whereas the understanding of Mr. Wilson was enshrined in Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution, which provides that Congress shall have the power “To declare War.”
Whereas during 227 years of national life, Congress has declared war on but five occasions, and only in cases of actual or perceived aggression against the United States;
Whereas presidents have commenced wars not in self-defense against scores of state or non-state actors without congressional declarations since World War II;
Whereas war impoverishes the people, endangers our soldiers, silences the law, risks blowback, awakens enemies, and diverts national genius from production to destruction;
Whereas James Madison, father of the Constitution, wrote to Thomas Jefferson: “”The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.”
Whereas Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution provides that the “President...shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors;”
Whereas Alexander Hamilton elaborated in Federalist 65 that impeachable “offenses...proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”
Whereas Article I, Section 2, clause 5 of the Constitution provides that the “House of Representatives...shall have the sole Power of Impeachment;” and,
Whereas Article VI of the Constitution provides that Representatives “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution....;”
Therefore, I pledge that as a Member of the United States House of Representatives, I will introduce and support an article of impeachment against any President who commences war against either a state or non-state actor without a declaration of war duly enacted by Congress. The impeachment article shall provide:
“In his/her conduct of the office of President of the United States, [name of President], in violation of his/her constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States, and to the best of his/her ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his/her constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, on and subsequent to [date] commenced war against [name of state or non-state actor attacked] in derogation of the power of Congress to declare war, to make appropriations, and to raise and support armies, and by such conduct warrants impeachment and trial and removal from office.”

Follow Bruce Fein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brucefeinesq

Original: Huffington Post

Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

Whoever wins the presidency on November 8, Congress should shut down the government, except for essential military or law enforcement personnel, on the first day after the 2017 inaugural unless and until the new President restores the Republic by doing the following:
1. Immediately end multi-trillion dollar presidential wars that have not been declared by Congress as required by Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution. That means, among other things, ceasing the offensive use of the military to fight wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
All United States military personnel should be withdrawn from these war zones for redeployment back home to protect Americans against foreign aggression as the Constitution envisions. To demonstrate that fighting wars only in self-defense does not subtract from our respect for the military, all rank-and-file soldiers should be given pay raises concurrently with the ending of all presidential wars.
James Madison, father of the Constitution, explained: “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.” Congress has declared war but five times in 227 years, and only in self-defense when the United States had been attacked or believed it had.
2. Immediately renounce the claimed and exercised limitless presidential power to play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill American citizens suspected of endangering the national security based on secret, unsubstantiated evidence shielded from external review. We fought the Revolutionary War to overthrow a lesser tyranny practiced by King George III.
3. Immediately revoke Executive Order 12333, which authorizes the warrantless surveillance of Americans for foreign intelligence purposes. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, 50 U.S.C. 1809, makes criminal electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute. An executive order is not a statute. The privacy of citizens is too important to be left to the President alone.
4. Immediately submit the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which seeks to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, to the Senate as a treaty requiring a two-thirds majority for ratification. At present, the JCPOA is an unconstitutional executive agreement. The sole reason it was not submitted as a treaty, according to Secretary of State John Kerry’s testimony before the House Foreign Relations Committee, was “[b]ecause you can’t pass a treaty anymore.” Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 75 that the President cannot be trusted with international commitments: “An ambitious man might make his own aggrandizement, by the aid of a foreign power, the price of his treachery to his constituents. The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind, as those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world, to the sole disposal of a magistrate created and circumstanced as would be a President of the United States.”
5. Immediately renounce the giving of diplomatic, economic, military, or other assistance to foreign countries in exchange for their funding international endeavors that Congress has not approved. Such cynical maneuvers evade the congressional power of the purse—an invincible instrument for preventing or remedying executive abuses. James Madison amplified in Federalist 58: “This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”
The United States stands at the precipice of executive tyranny. If Congress fails to arrest limitless presidential power, the Minutemen sacrifices at Lexington and Concord will have been in vain. History is watching Members of Congress to separate the courageous from the cowardly. A Member who recoils at defending shutting down government as a justified price for restoring the Republic will be execrated by posterity.

Follow Bruce Fein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brucefeinesq

Original: Huffington Post

Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

War is the greatest scourge of mankind. Unsentimental Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman remarked: “I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”
 
War not only kills and maims on an industrial scale, it also destroys liberty by creating an Executive Leviathan. James Madison presciently taught:
 
“War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
 
Hence it has grown into an axiom that the executive is the department of power most distinguished by its propensity to war: hence it is the practice of all states, in proportion as they are free, to disarm this propensity of its influence.”
 
Since war is hell, the United States Constitution champions peace except in self-defense. It does so by exclusively entrusting Congress with decisions to cross the Rubicon from peace to war. Thus, Article I, section 8, clause 11 gives Congress power “to declare war.” Its authors knew the congressional personality would be highly risk-averse or timid, which would deter declarations except in cases of actual or perceived aggression against the United States itself. James Wilson, delegate to the constitutional convention and future Justice of the Supreme Court, elaborated to the Pennsylvania ratification convention:
 
“This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress, for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large;—this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives....[which is elected every two years by the people]”
 
The Constitution prohibits congressional evasion of its responsibility for war and peace by delegation to the Executive Branch. It would condemn a statute authorizing the President to initiate war whenever the White House believes the public interest requires it. The Constitution’s separation of powers is intended to safeguard liberty irrespective of the willingness of one branch to surrender its powers to another. Chief Justice John Roberts explained in Wellness Int’l Network Ltd v. Sharif (dissenting): “[W]e have emphasized that the values of liberty and accountability protected by the separation of powers belong not to any branch of the Government but to the Nation as a whole. A branch’s consent to a diminution of its constitutional powers therefore does not mitigate the harm or cure the wrong.”
 
More than 225 years of experience under the Constitution have vindicated its expectation that Congress will declare war only in self-defense. Congress has done so on but five (5) occasions, and each was a response to actual or perceived aggression against the United States itself.
 
1.      War of 1812. Congress declared war against Great Britain after receiving a war message from President James Madison. It asserted, among other things, that the British had committed acts of war against the United States; had kidnapped thousands of American sailors from American flagged ships sailing on the high seas in violation of international law; had plundered neutral American merchant ships; had spilt the blood of American citizens within our territorial jurisdiction; and, had provoked Native American Indian savagery against American civilians.
 
2.      1846-48 Mexican-American War. Congress declared war against Mexico after receiving a war message from President James K. Polk claiming that the Mexican military had declared war against the United States, had killed or wounded 16 American soldiers on American soil, and had taken scores of others prisoner. (In fact, American soldiers had not been killed on American soil, but Congress acted on the assumption that they had).
 
3.      1898 Spanish-American War. Congress declared war on Spain after receiving a war message from President William McKinley claiming that hostilities between Spain and Cuba were causing American deaths and the destruction of American property. The President also insinuated that Spain was responsible for the explosion of the Maine in Havana harbor and the consequent deaths of hundreds of American sailors and marines. He amplified:
 
“The destruction of that noble vessel has filled the national heart with inexpressible horror. Two hundred and fifty-eight brave sailors and marines and two officers of our Navy, reposing in the fancied security of a friendly harbor, have been hurled to death, grief and want brought to their homes, and sorrow to the nation.
 
The Naval Court of Inquiry, which, it is needless to say, commands the unqualified confidence of the government, was unanimous in its conclusion that the destruction of the Maine was caused by an exterior explosion, that of a submarine mine. It did not assume to place the responsibility. That remains to be fixed.
 
In any event, the destruction of the Maine, by whatever exterior cause, is a patent and impressive proof of a state of things in Cuba that is intolerable. That condition is thus shown to be such that the Spanish government cannot assure safety and security to a vessel of the American Navy in the harbor of Havana on a mission of peace, and rightfully there. . . .”
 
4.      World War I. Congress declared war against Germany after receiving a war message from President Woodrow Wilson asserting that Germany had made war on the United States, and that “American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply.” He maintained that Germany had put us in a state of war, and was asking Congress to act defensively:
 
“I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.”
 
5.      World War II. Congress declared war against Japan after receiving a war message from President Franklin D. Roosevelt advising that a state of war existed because of Japanese naval and air attacks against the United States.
 
Since World War II, no President has asked Congress for a declaration of war. The White House either initiates wars on its own, or asks Congress to authorize the President to decide whether and when to go to war through unconstitutional delegations of the war power.
 
Presidents have done so because they know Congress will not declare war against any foreign country or non-state actor except in response to war already commenced against the United States itself. None of our multiple wars since World War II has been in self-defense, and none has been declared by Congress, for example, Korea, Libya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The 9/11 abominations were not acts of war by a non-state actor, but industrial scale murder. Accordingly, the 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, was tried and convicted in a federal court of, among other things, conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism and conspiracy to murder. He was not accused of war crimes. The 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) declines to characterize the 9/11 crimes as a war of aggression against the United States. The text references “treacherous violence” and “grave acts of violence.”
 
Our multi-trillion dollar warfare state can be ended by following rather than flouting the Constitution’s allocation of war powers. We need presidential candidates who will sign “no presidential war” pledges, congressional candidates who will pledge to impeach a president for initiating presidential wars, and voters who will boycott presidential and congressional candidates who refuse to make these respective pledges. There are no better ways to avoid the scourge of war.

Follow Bruce Fein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brucefeinesq

Original: Huffington Post

Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton champions wars to effectuate regime change. Their immorality, illegality, and stupidity do not diminish Ms. Clinton’s enthusiasm for treating independent nations as serfs of the United States.
As First Lady, she warmly supported the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which made it the policy of the Unites States to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. As United States Senator, she invoked the 1998 policy in voting for the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force Against Iraq. Saddam’s successors proved a cure worse than the disease. Shiite dominated governments allied with Iran, oppressed Sunnis, Kurds, and Turkmen, and created a power vacuum that gave birth to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Our national security has been weakened.
As Secretary of State in 2011, Ms. Clinton vocally supported the war against Libya to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi on the heels of his abandonment of weapons of mass destruction. She boasted with the dripping arrogance of Julius Caesar after Gaddafi’s death: “We came, we saw, he died.” She insisted that regime change in Libya was for humanitarian purposes. She agreed with President Barack Obama that to be faithful to “who we are,” we must overthrow governments that are oppressing their citizens by force and violence.
Libya predictably descended into dystopia after Gaddafi’s murder. (It had no democratic cultural, historical, or philosophical credentials). Tribal militias proliferated. Competing governments emerged. ISIS entered into the power vacuum in Sirte, which has required the return of United States military forces to Libya. Terrorists murdered our Ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi. Gaddafi’s conventional weapons were looted and spread throughout the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled and are continuing to flee Libyan shores for Europe. North Korea and Iran hardened their nuclear ambitions to avoid Gaddafi’s grisly fate. Our national security has been weakened.
Like the French Bourbons who forgot nothing and learned nothing, Ms. Clinton eagerness to initiate wars for regime change was undiminished by the Iraq and Libya debacles. She urged war against Syria to oust President Bashar al-Assad. She confidently insinuated that we could transform Syria into a flourishing democracy sans James Madisons, George Washingtons, or Thomas Jeffersons because of our unique nation-building genius. She forgot South Sudan. We midwifed its independence in 2011. Despite our hopes and prayers, the new nation descended into a gruesome ongoing civil war including child soldiers between the Dinka lead by President Salva Kiir and the Nuer lead by former Vice President Riek Machar. More than 50,000 have died, more than 2.2 million have been displaced, and a harrowing number have been murdered, tortured, or raped. South Sudan epitomizes our nation-building incompetence.
Wars for regime change are immoral. We have not been tasked by a Supreme Being to appraise foreign nations like a schoolmarm and to invade those to whom we have superciliously assigned a failing grade. As Jesus sermonized in Matthew 7: 1-3:
Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Thus, Thomas Jefferson wrote to President James Monroe in 1823:
The presumption of dictating to an independent nation the form of its government is so arrogant, so atrocious, that indignation as well as moral sentiment enlists all our partialities and prayers in favor of one and our equal execrations against the other.
Wars for regime change also violate international law. Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter generally prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state...” Article 51 creates a narrow exception for wars in self-defense “if an armed attack occurs...” Regime change wars do not fit that narrow exception. 

They are also stupid, like playing Russian roulette. We lack the wisdom necessary to insure that successor regimes will strengthen rather than weaken our national security taking into account, among other things, the staggering military and financial costs of propping up corrupt, incompetent, and unpopular governments.
Ms. Clinton underscores in her memoir that she would rather be “caught trying” something kinetic than to try masterly inactivity like Fabius Maximus. She would rather be criticized for fighting too many wars for regime change than too few. 

She is the war hawks’ dream candidate.
 
Follow Bruce Fein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brucefeinesq

Original: Huffington Post

Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

Five American foreign policy myths are generated in the corridors of power to elicit popular support and lavish congressional funding for the multi-trillion dollar military-industrial-counterterrorism complex.
MYTH 1. We actively oppose non-democratic nations.
Not only does our foreign policy underwrite a cavalcade of dictatorial-authoritarian regimes, we often prefer them to democratic dispensations. Among other things, in 1953, we overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, in favor of the dictatorial Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlevi. In 1954, we overthrew Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in favor of genocidal military dictators. In 1965, we intervened militarily in the Dominican Republic to block the restoration to power of democratically elected President Juan Bosch. In 1973, we intervened in Chile to orchestrate the overthrow and killing of democratically elected President Salvador Allende in favor of the murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet. From 1976-1983, we encouraged military dictatorship in Argentina featuring grisly human rights violations at the expense of democracy.
The United States routinely supports dictatorial or oppressive regimes with weapons sales or financial assistance. We have approved approximately $90 billion in weapons sales to the religiously bigoted, misogynistic, anti-democratic, anti-Semitic Saudi Arabian government since 2010 alone. We have also approved billions of dollars in weapons sales to the Persian Gulf statelets ofQatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman, all of which exhibit contempt for fundamental human rights. In 2011, Saudi Arabia dispatched troops to Bahrein to suppress a popular uprising against a tyrannical, sectarian Sunni regime while the Fifth Fleet of the United States Navy stood by.
We support the Jordanian monarchy, Egypt’s military dictatorship, an ousted Yemeni dictator, a growing authoritarian government in Turkey, a tribal tyranny in Ethiopia, and a military dictatorship in Thailand.
We support regimes that assist our foreign policy objective of global domination irrespective of their democratic credentials. The basic idea is well illustrated by two quotations. President Franklin Roosevelt reputedly said about Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, “He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.” And French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau acerbically remarked about President Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference: “He speaks like Jesus Christ, but he acts like [British Prime Minister] Lloyd George.”
MYTH 2. The United States knows how to make countries embrace democracy; and, we will succeed in giving birth to democratic dispensations if we employ sufficient financial or military leverage.
The infinitely complex elements of democracy have been mastered by only a handful since the beginning of time. It took the unique mind, scholarship, and political experience of James Madison to produce a “Miracle at Philadelphia” in 1787, i.e., the United States Constitution. The British needed six centuries after Magna Charta before monarchy was replaced by responsible government.
Despite substantial financial or military leverage, we failed to introduce viable democracies or reasonable facsimiles in South Vietnam, the Arab Middle East, Somalia, Libya, South Sudan, Egypt, Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, and Azerbaijan, among other nations. We have been unable to prevent the loss of Turkey’s democratic trappings.
Democracy in post-World War II Germany and Japan do not disprove the myth. Prior to World War II, both countries had embraced building blocks of democracy and the rule of law during the Weimar Republic and Meiji Restoration, respectively. Both countries exhibited a homogenous culture and self-identity necessary before tribalism can be rendered subservient to national loyalties. The United States needed little leverage or genius to return Germany and Japan to their democratic paths after the war concluded.
Neither do the cases of South Korea or Taiwan contradict the myth. In the former, we supported three decades of authoritarian rule under Syngman Rhee, Park Chung Hee, and Chun Do Hwan before democracy was flowered at the demand of the South Korean people. We had delayed South Korea’s democratic flowering by approving of the military’s bloody suppression of the 1980 Kwangju uprising. In Taiwan, we supported the military dictatorship of Chiang Kai-Shek from 1949-1975. Taiwan slowly segued into a democracy by popular demand over the next two decades under the hand of the dictator’s son, Chiang Ching Kuo. The culmination was the direct election of President Lee Teng-hui in 1996. In the interim, the United States ceased recognition of Taiwan in favor of the more ruthless and dictatorial People’s Republic of China. The United States did not accelerate, but delayed Taiwan’s indigenous embrace of democracy by our unwavering support for the military dictatorship of Chiang Kai-Shek for twenty-five years.
MYTH 3. The United States is saddled with a moral or legal obligation to undertake “humanitarian” wars to prevent large-scale killings or genocide in foreign lands.
The only moral obligation of the United States Government is to advance the interests of its citizens who pay the taxes, obey the laws, and fight necessary wars in self-defense. The USG has no moral obligation to assist any foreigners unless we are responsible for their plight.
In the 1930’s alone, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin killed at least thirteen to fifteen million opponents—more than twice the number of Holocaust victims. The United States stood idly by without provoking either moral or legal rebuke. Approximately 65-70 million Chinese were killed under Mao Zedong’s dictatorship while the United States like all other nations and the United Nations did nothing. It has never been suggested that a “humanitarian” war against Mao was a moral or legal imperative.
Not a word in the United States Constitution or international law that supports a United States obligation to send its citizens abroad to risk that last full measure of devotion to save foreigners from killing or abuse by their own governments or peoples. Foreigners owe us no loyalty and pay us no taxes. If there were such an obligation, we would be compelled to commence multiple wars immediately with Russia over Chechens, China over Tibetans and Uighurs, Burma over the Rohingya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo over tribal and ethnic killings which have surpassed 6 million, South Sudan for the massacre of non-Dinka tribes, Nigeria for brutalizing Christians and Biafrans, and North Korea for starving or otherwise oppressing its entire population. Humanitarian wars frequently kill more lives than are saved, as with our military interventions against Libya in 2011 and Somalia in 1992.
United States citizens who feel morally compelled to attempt the prevention of mass killings abroad are free to risk their lives or money towards that end in the manner of the 3,000 Americans who fought for the Loyalists against General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 under the banner of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
“Humanitarian” war is an oxymoron. All wars make legal what would otherwise be first degree murder, which can never be humanitarian.
MYTH 4. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is a moral or legal cornerstone of international peace and security.
The NPT reflects an international legal order in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. It crowns five (5) nations with the exclusive rights to develop, possess, and deploy nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France.
The five were not selected because of a demonstrated superiority in international morality or justice. The United States is the only nation that has ever used nuclear weapons. The United States and the Soviet Union brought the world to the edge of nuclear destruction during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. China’s Mao Zedong blithely remarked in 1957: “I’m not afraid of nuclear war. There are 2.7 billion people in the world; it doesn’t matter if some are killed. China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left. I’m not afraid of anyone.”
During the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur requested authority to use atomic weapons. He explained that he would drop 30-50 atomic bombs across the neck of Manchuria, and spread a belt of radioactive cobalt from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea to insure that for 60 years there would be no land invasion of Korea from the North.
The United States, Russia, Great Britain, China, and France were the only nuclear-weapons states when the NPT was negotiated. They wished to maintain that military advantage over the rest of the world. Under the NPT, all non-nuclear weapons states are forced to assume a risk of nuclear obliteration that nuclear-weapons states do not. That asymmetry emboldens rather than discourages adventurism by the latter.
The key peace provision in the NPT has been flouted. Article VI requires nuclear-weapons states “to pursue negotiations in good faith...on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” No such negotiations have been forthcoming for nearly 50 years.
The NPT as an instrument of international peace is further weakened by Article VII’s authorization to withdraw upon three months’ notice. North Korea exercised this option in 2003, and is currently estimated to possess 10-15 nuclear warheads. Moreover, Israel, Pakistan, and India never signed the NPT, and have developed substantial nuclear arsenals.
In sum, the NPT is only an ornamental barrier to nuclear weapons proliferation.
MYTH 5. The United States is an indispensable nation. We are compelled by providence to play the role of world leader.
This is national narcissism at its apex, a modern version of “Manifest Destiny” that ignited the Mexican-American War and the slaughters of Native American Indians.
In playing the role of “world leader,” the United States was responsible for millions of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian civilian deaths during the Vietnam War. We inflicted further devastation on millions more with indiscriminate use of Agent Orange.
In playing the role of “indispensable” nation” since 9/11, we have been responsible for at least 1.3 million Muslim deaths according to a study conducted the Physicians for Social Responsibility. On Hillary Clinton’s watch as Secretary of State, we turned Libya and South Sudan into Aceldamas. Our ongoing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and Libya have generated millions of refugees. On May 12, 1996, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a soulmate of Hillary Clinton, callously declared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” sanctions against Saddam Hussein were “worth [the price]” of killing 500,000 Iraqi children.
Graveyards are filled with indispensable nations.
 
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Original: Huffington Post

Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author
We should not be in the business of pledging to send our brave soldiers to risk that last full measure of devotion to defend Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania from Russian aggression, or Croatia or Albania from Serbian attack. Their sole duty is to defend the citizens of the United States who pay their salaries and owe allegiance to the United States, which Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Croatians, and Albanians do not. For that reason among others, the United States should invoke Article 13 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to withdraw.
Our NATO membership contradicts the Constitution’s foreign policy of billions for invincible self-defense, but not one cent for Empire or entangling alliances. NATO was established in April 1949 not in self-defense, but to provide military protection to Europe (including the French colonial appendage in Algeria) and the world generally at the beckoning of the British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. That Empire objective hearkened back to President Woodrow Wilson’s starry-eyed aim to make the world safe for democracy by employing United States military force under the League of Nations auspices to defend every border on the planet. President Harry Truman, in signing the NATO treaty, echoed Wilson: “By this treaty, we are not only seeking to establish freedom from aggression and from the use of force in the North Atlantic community, but we are also actively striving to promote and preserve peace throughout the world.” (Truman economized on the truth. Portugal, a founding member of NATO, was then governed by dictatorial Prime Minister Antonio Salazar.)
To reiterate, self-defense did not push us into NATO. In 1949, we were the most militarily and economically dominant nation on the globe. We enjoyed an atomic bomb monopoly, and Europe was militarily unified under the 1948 Brussels Treaty Organization. No invasion from any quarter was threatened—including from the Soviet Union. Even during the depths of World War II, neither the Wehrmacht nor the Imperia Japanese Army set foot on the continental United States. We joined NATO as part of a gratuitous, preoccupation with containing Soviet power no matter how irrelevant to protecting us from attack. It was no accident that our NATO membership was soon followed by President Truman’s unconstitutional Korean War, the overthrow of democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh the overthrow of Guatemala’s President Jacobo Arbenz, executive agreements to defend Franco’s Spain, and the attempted assassination of Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These undertakings were calculated to check the Soviet Union.
Our NATO and post-NATO quest for Empire and global domination made a mockery of the bravery and sacrifices of Lexington and Concord in 1775. Our glory had previously been liberty, not world leadership whatever that means. Our march had previously been the march of the mind, not the march of the foot soldier. Our greatness had previously been a fair opportunity for every citizen to develop his faculties and to pursue his ambitions free from domestic or foreign predation. Our summum bonum had never previously been a multi-billion dollar military-industrial complex bestriding the world like a colossus chanting, “We are the chosen people.”
Suppose the Soviet Union had invaded Western Europe without NATO despite the BTO military alliance. That would not have disturbed the safety and security of the United States. Indeed, the invasion would have been a blunder which would have accelerated the disintegration of the Soviet Empire and weakened its ability to threaten us in the interim.. Conquests or occupations of hostile peoples weakens rather than strengthens the conqueror or the occupier, for example, Napoleon in Haiti or Spain, or the United States South Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. .
The point may seem counterintuitive, and requires elaboration. Colonization, conquest or foreign occupation loses money for the national treasuries of the colonizer, conqueror, or occupier, although particular individuals or companies may be enriched by state-created monopolies or crony capitalism. The military costs of occupation and control of hostile populations dwarf any offsetting expropriation of property. Thus, post-World War II decolonization in Africa and Asia lifted economic albatrosses from Britain, France, and the Netherlands, among other nations. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union were precipitated substantially by the prohibitive costs of subsidizing and militarily occupying and controlling its Eastern and Central European satellites. The USSR was required to suppress a 1953 Uprising in East Germany, the 1956 Hungarian revolt, Prague Spring in 1968, the 1970-71 Uprising in Poland, and the Polish Solidarity Movement in 1981, among other manifestations of chronic foreign restiveness or resentment.
The costs of ruling over a hostile population are staggering. Russia, for instance, spent $30 billion from 2000-2010 to prop up its rule in the Muslim North Caucasus, including Chechnya Another $80 billion will have been forthcoming by 2025 for a population of only 9 million.
The Eastern and Central Europe and North Caucasus examples demonstrate that Soviet aggression against Western Europe after World War II would have weakened it and probably failed. In 1949, Western Europe was far stronger militarily than was the mujahideen that thwarted Soviet aggression in Afghanistan in 1979 or the North Vietnamese who defeated the United States in Vietnam. At that time, Europe had already united militarily under the BTO to defend itself. If the Soviet Red Army secured temporary victories, the military resources expended in the endeavors would nevertheless have lessened its ability to attack the United States in the same way that Operation Barbarossa in World War II lessened Hitler’s threat to Great Britain by squandering Third Reich military resources in fighting the Soviet Union.
Notwithstanding these truths, our overwhelming military victories in World War II fueled a psychology of Empire that found expression in NATO membership. The chief earmark of that psychology is world domination for its own sake—even when it promises self-ruination. NATO enabled the United States to dominate Western Europe. We were NATO’s torso, while the Europeans were NATO limbs. The Supreme Allied Commander in Europe has always been an American. At present, the United States pays 75 percent of NATO’s budget, and deploys 65,000 to 70,000 troops in Europe.
But domination for the sake of domination is treasonous to the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The United States was an anti-imperialist creation. The exclusive purpose of government, according to the Declaration, is to secure unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not to race abroad in search of monsters to destroy. The Constitution repudiated the global projection of force or wars not in self-defense—no matter how benignly motivated—because the results would subordinate liberty and transparency to coercion and secrecy by concentrating limitless power in the executive. The Roman Republic had been destroyed by endowing dictators with limitless power to fight wars.
The Constitution’s war powers were entrusted to Congress, not to the President, to prevent the emergence of a warfare state underwritten by a military-industrial complex. James Madison explained in a letter to Thomas Jefferson:
“The constitution supposes, what the History of all Govts demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legisl.”
Abraham Lincoln echoed:
“The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”
Then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams made the case against wars not in self-defense no
matter how glorious the immediate objective in a July 4, 1821 Address to Congress:
“[The United States] well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.
The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....
She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....”
NATO marked an unprecedented break in American history. Not only was it the first peacetime alliance ever, but it was the first time promoting and preserving peace everywhere in the world became a United States objective. NATO flouted President George Washington’s Farewell Address warning against entangling alliances or dividing the world between angles and devils. The treaty tied our fate to the vicissitudes of West European politics and played favorites among nations. But the Farewell Address admonished:
“[N]othing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and, that in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and interest.”
President Washington also warned that any military engagements or alliances with
Europe would impair our safety and other national interests:
“Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”
Adhering to Washington, Madison, and John Quincy Adams, the United States prospered and spread across the continent for 70 years. We uniformly refrained from foreign entanglements. Among other things, we remained aloof from the Central and South American rebellions against Spain and Portugal, the Greek War of independence against the Ottoman Empire, and Hungary’s 1848 revolutionary ambitions against Russia. As regards the latter, Senator Henry Clay explained:
“Far better is it for ourselves, for Hungary, and for the cause of liberty, that, adhering to our wise, pacific system, and avoiding the distant wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp burning brightly on this western shore as a light to all nations, than to hazard its utter extinction amid the ruins of fallen or falling republics in Europe.”
The cornerstone of national security is the willingness of citizens to fight and die for their country in self-defense. We enjoy that patriotism in abundance. Moreover, we confront no existential or other threats that could arguably justify NATO or any other defense treaty. What Abraham Lincoln said in 1838 before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois is equally true today:
“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?—Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!—All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
NATO is more ill-conceived at present, having expanded to 28 members, than it was in 1949. Among other things, we are committed to defending the Baltic States, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria from Russian aggression. The previous occupation or domination of these nations by the Soviet Union during the Cold War weakened it financially and militarily. Why should we seek to prevent Russia from repeating that blunder? We are also absurdly committed to defending Slovenia, Albania, Greece, and Croatia—none of which have relevance to our self-defense.
NATO advocates argue that the spread of democracy makes the United States safer; that we know how to spread democracy; and, that tyranny anywhere is a threat to our security. They substantially echo President George W. Bush’s counterfactual Second Inaugural gospel:
“Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation’s security, and the calling of our time.
So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”
The NATO-Bush doctrine is unconvincing. The United States was born and has flourished amidst tyrannies. They include the French Empire, the Romanoff Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Chinese Empire, and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Today, tyranny in Belarus or Zimbabwe, among other nations, is no danger to the United States. Our peaceful co-existence with tyrannies has been the rule, not the exception.
Additionally, we can no more create democracies from cultures and institutions with no democratic DNA hostile than we can build a perpetual motion machine. We have failed spectacularly attempting the impossible in South Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen despite a staggering investment of resources. South Sudan is conclusive proof of our impotence to give birth to democratic dispensations. We midwifed its 2011 independence from Sudan, but It quickly succumbed to a grisly ethnic civil war between President Salva Kiir and the Dinka against Rick Machar and the Nuer featuring tens of thousands killed and millions displaced. South Sudan was a failed state on arrival, and remains so today. Our efforts to collaborate with its leaders and people to steer a democratic course were predictably futile.
The evidence is mixed as to whether democracies are inherently less threatening to the United States than are authoritarian or tyrannical nations. Hamas was popularly elected in the Gaza Strip, but is listed as an international terrorist organization by the United States. Egypt’s former President Mohammad Morsi was a greater danger to United States interests than is his less democratically elected successor Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The United States has refrained from clamor for free elections in Saudi Arabia for fear of the results, i.e., victory for Wahhabism. Tyranny by the majority is tyranny nonetheless. In any event, the evidence is far too inconclusive to assert that wars against non-democratic nations are, ipso facto, justifiable wars of self-defense.
In leaving NATO, the United States would dramatically lessen tensions or conflicts with Russia and strengthen our security against external aggression. Among other things, the stage would be set for a new treaty to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the two countries. Russia would probably claim a sphere of influence over its neighbors, but that would be unalarming. The United States has acted in the same way for more than two centuries, including the Monroe Doctrine, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, the Panama Canal, and military ventures in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Nicaragua. To maintain that all nations are equal, but that the United States is more equal than others is to encourage war.
To make the nation more secure in its safety, wealth, and liberty, NATO should be made a museum piece along with other artifacts of the American Empire.
 
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Original: Huffington Post

Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

The Constitution’s architects unanimously agreed on the allocation of war powers. They unanimously agreed that only Congress should be entrusted with decisions to initiate war under Article I, section 8, clause 11. (The President would retain authority to “repel sudden attacks”).
The architects made Congress the exclusive steward of the war power because legislators have nothing to gain and everything to lose by gratuitous belligerency. No war monument has ever been erected to immortalize a legislator; and, the powers of Congress recede during wartime.
The opposite is true of the executive branch, whose personality salutes Mars and scorns Minerva. James Madison, father of the Constitution, elaborated:
In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man; not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
Future Chief Justice of the United States, John Jay, similarly remarked in Federalist 4:
[A]bsolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.
The reasons advanced by Madison, Jay, and others against presidential wars did not pivot on the state of weapons technology or speed of travel, but on eternals of human nature, including the incorrigibility of the executive branch in craving war for the sake of war with ulterior motives pernicious to liberty.
In serving as megaphones for an extra-constitutional American Empire and multi-trillion dollar permanent global presidential wars, the New York Times and the Washington Post propagate myths about the war powers worth more than two carrier battle groups to the Pentagon.
Myth 1: Article II of the Constitution empowers the President unilaterally to initiate war—including nuclear war—without a legislative mandate enacted by Congress. 

Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution unambiguously entrusts to Congress—not the President—exclusive responsibility for deciding to take the nation from a state of peace to a state of war. Every participant in the drafting, debating, and ratifying of the Constitution shared that understanding, including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, father of the Constitution, future Justice of the Supreme Court James Wilson, United States Chief Justice John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. James Madison expressed the national consensus in a letter to Jefferson: “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.” That consensus was neither disturbed nor violated for 163 years. Beginning in 1802, for instance, Congress enacted ten statutes expressly authorizing military action by Presidents Jefferson and Madison against the Barbary States. That consensus also shipwrecked President Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations’ treaty, which would have obligated the United States to defend the boundaries of other nations without congressional declarations of war. To obtain Senate ratification of the United Nations Treaty, Article 43, paragraph 3 specifically requires a congressional declaration of war before the President may use our armed forces to implement a U.N. Security Council resolution. From Potsdam, President Harry Truman cabled Senator Kenneth McKellar: “When any such agreement or agreements are negotiated [to use the United States Armed Forces under Article 43 of the United Nations Treaty] it will be my purpose to ask Congress for appropriate legislation to approve them.”
In sum, there is no intellectually respectable support for the theory that the Constitution authorizes presidential wars.
Myth 2: Treaties ratified by the United States Senate can constitutionally obligate the United States to conduct war on behalf of foreign nations without a congressional declaration of war.
Treaties are subordinate to the United States Constitution, including Article I, section 8, clause 11. Justice Hugo Black elaborated in Reid v. Covert (1956):
“Article VI, the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, declares:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof, and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; . . .
There is nothing in this language which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution. Nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification of the Constitution which even suggests such a result. These debates, as well as the history that surrounds the adoption of the treaty provision in Article VI, make it clear that the reason treaties were not limited to those made in “pursuance” of the Constitution was so that agreements made by the United States under the Articles of Confederation, including the important peace treaties which concluded the Revolutionary War, would remain in effect. It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution...to construe Article VI as permitting the United States to exercise power under an international agreement without observing constitutional prohibitions.
Accordingly, Article V of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which purports to require to the United States to defend all 28 NATO members from attack, including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, is unconstitutional. The House of Representatives is excluded from the treaty process, and its concurrence is necessary for a congressional declaration of war. James Wilson, future Justice of the United States Supreme Court, underscored the importance of that requirement to the Pennsylvania ratification convention:
“This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress, for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large;—this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives; from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion, that nothing but our national interest can draw us into a war.”
Article V of NATO marked the first occasion in 163 years in which a treaty purported to require the United States to conduct war on behalf of other nations without congressional declarations.
Myth 3: Unconstitutional presidential wars have become constitutional by dint of longstanding practice beginning in 1950 with President Harry Truman’s war in Korea without a congressional declaration.
Constitutional transgressions are not excused because they have been repeated for long years. The United States Supreme Court held in Erie Railroad v. Tompkins (1936) that for a century since Swift v. Tyson (1842) federal courts had been unconstitutionally creating federal common law to govern lawsuits between citizens of different states. The Court similarly held unconstitutional the use of the legislative veto to invalidate executive action in INS v. Chadha (1983), notwithstanding hundreds of such provisions enacted during the previous 54 years with the consent of the President.
The Court explained in Myers v. United States (1926) that great weight is to be given to the practices and understandings of early administrations and Congresses populated by many who had participated in the 1787 constitutional convention. They were uniformly against presidential wars. President George Washington, who presided over the 1787 convention, voiced the standard view: “The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress. Therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure.”
Myth 4: Presidential wars are constitutionally permissible because Congress repeatedly acquiesces.
It is true that presidential wars without congressional declarations have been chronic since 1950, including but not limited to: President Truman’s war in Korea; President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War; the Secret War in Laos conducted by Presidents Johnson and Richard Nixon; President George H.W. Bush’s war in Panama; President William Clinton’s wars in Bosnia and Serbia; and, President Barack Obama’s wars against Libya and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) anywhere on the planet. And it is equally true that Congress has generally acquiesced in these usurpations because terrified of being held politically and morally accountable for matters of supreme significance to the nation and our armed forces. But the Supreme Court has held that the Constitution’s separation of powers does not permit one branch to surrender its powers to another branch, for instance, a line-item veto invalidated in Clinton v. New York (1998). Chief Justice John Roberts elaborated in Wellness International Network, Limited v. Sharif (2015): “[W]e have emphasized that the values of liberty and accountability protected by the separation of powers belong not to any branch of the Government but to the Nation as a whole. A branch’s consent to a diminution of its constitutional powers, therefore does not mitigate the harm or cure the wrong.”
Myth 5: The President is entitled to flout the Constitution’s allocation of war powers and conduct presidential wars because changes in technology and the obligation of the United States to exercise world leadership have made the Constitution obsolete in foreign affairs.
The Constitution’s authors were long-headed. They knew experience and unforeseeable changes in circumstances might dictate a need for constitutional alterations or adaptations. Thus, Article V was written to authorize amendments supported by two-thirds majorities in Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures. The very first Congress proposed the Bill of Rights, which was ratified by the States. No amendment has ever been proposed, however, to disturb the Constitution’s assignment to Congress of exclusive responsibility for decisions to cross the Rubicon from peace to war.
Justice Black denied that the mushrooming United States role in international affairs since the Constitution was ratified in 1787, simpliciter, authorized the exercise of extra-constitutional powers in Reid v Covert:
If our foreign commitments become of such nature that the Government can no longer satisfactorily operate within the bounds laid down by the Constitution, that instrument can be amended by the method which it prescribes. But we have no authority, or inclination, to read exceptions into it which are not there.

All Empires create myths to conceal or expiate lawlessness, cruelties, or double standards. Thus, the Roman Empire turned enemy territories into wilderness and called it peace. The American Empire turns the Constitution’s war powers into a jumble of political calculations with ulterior motives and calls it law. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
 
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Original: Huffington Post

Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton more threatens the Constitution’s separation of powers and celebration of liberty than does her vulgar Neanderthal opponent, Republican Party nominee Donald Trump.
Justice Louis D. Brandeis explained in Olmstead v .United States (1928): “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”
Mr. Trump is a would-be, evil-minded ruler. Among other things, he has embraced torture, the extermination of families of suspected terrorists, concentration camps for American Muslims and their demotions to second-class citizenship, punishment of Trump detractors, vigilante justice, warrantless military spying on American citizens, and bigotry towards Americans with Mexican heritage. But Trump’s notoriety has awakened a figurative Paul Revere against himself. If he is elected president, the media, Congress, the judiciary, and the public would be eagle-eyed watchdogs to frustrate Trump’s wish-list to further pulverize the Constitution.
Ms. Clinton is a woman of “zeal, well meaning but without understanding.” She would be more dangerous to liberty and the Constitution in the White House than Trump would be. The first woman President would provoke less scrutiny and media or political opposition to her counter-constitutional convictions and actions because she is less overtly feral than Trump and presumptively less ruthless or megalomaniacal because she is female.
During her acceptance speech in Philadelphia, the Democratic presidential nominee warned: “Remember: Our Founders fought a Revolution and wrote a Constitution so America would never be a nation where one person had all the power.”
True enough. But coming from Ms. Clinton, the statement was as risible as would have been Napoleon during his 1804 self-coronation as Emperor warning the audience against the French Bourbon dynasty because it lusted for too much power.
Clinton’s words and public actions for more than two decades as First Lady, United States Senator, Secretary of State, author of Hard Choices, and presidential candidate betray a conception of the presidency as an elected monarchy endowed with more unchecked authority than was exerted by King George III. It was that power that provoked the American Revolution which she purportedly celebrated.
Ms. Clinton champions multi-trillion dollar unconstitutional presidential wars or other offensive uses of the military without congressional declarations or authorizations required under Article I, section 8, clause 11. Examples include Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) everywhere on the planet. During her 2008 presidential candidacy, Ms. Clinton declared that if she were elected president she would unilaterally “obliterate” 80 million Iranians if Iran attacked Israel. 
She salutes unconstitutional United States treaty commitments to fight wars on behalf of scores of other nations without required congressional declarations.
Speaking through Justice Hugo Black, the Supreme Court declared in Reid v. Covert (1956) that treaties cannot override constitutional prescriptions: “There is nothing in this language [of the Supremacy Clause] which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution. Nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification of the Constitution which even suggests such a result.” Justice Black added that if unforeseen developments in weapons technology or otherwise argued in favor of constitutional change, the remedy would be a constitutional amendment, not constitutional lawlessness: “If our foreign commitments become of such nature that the Government can no longer satisfactorily operate within the bounds laid down by the Constitution, that instrument can be amended by the method which it prescribes.”
The Constitution’s authors would have impeached Ms. Clinton as Secretary of State and removed her from office for complicity in high crimes and misdemeanors against the Constitution, which Lord Gladstone acclaimed as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”
President George Washington, who presided over the constitutional convention, repudiated Clinton’s claim of presidential power to wage war without congressional authorization. He elaborated: “The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress. Therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure.” Every delegate present at the creation of the Constitution agreed.
Alexander Hamilton, who was a delegate to the constitutional convention, underscored in Federalist 69 that the Constitution had denied the President power of a monarch: “The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.”
James Madison, renowned as the father of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, secretary of state, and twice President of the United States, explained in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: “”The constitution supposes, what the History of all Govts demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legisl.”
James Wilson, delegate to the constitutional convention and future Justice of the United States Supreme Court, emphasized to the Pennsylvania ratification convention that neither the President alone or in conjunction with treaties ratified only by the Senate could embroil the nation in war: “This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion that nothing but our interest can draw us into war.”
United States Chief Justice John Marshall, who served as a delegate to the Virginia ratification convention, Member of Congress, and as secretary of state, lectured in Talbot v. Seeman (1801): “The whole powers of war being, by the constitution of the United States, vested in Congress, the acts of that body alone can be resorted to as guides to this inquiry.”
Nothing Ms. Clinton has ever written or spoken is worthy of a semicolon in the writings or speeches of these constitutional giants. They brought forth a Miracle at Philadelphia, in the words of Catherine Drinker Bowen. We know Clinton is a constitutional ignoramus from her own testimony and past lawyering. Among other things, her reading list excludes not only Aristotle, Plato, Thucydides, Pericles, Cicero, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Dante, Machiavelli, Erasmus, Locke, Gibbon, Voltaire, Hume, and Rousseau, but also James Otis, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Adam Smith, the Federalist Papers, and George Washington’s Farewell Address.
Additionally, Ms. Clinton wrote a brief as a House Judiciary Committee lawyer arguing that President Richard Nixon should be denied legal counsel to oppose articles of impeachment. She ignored or concealed the then-recent precedent regarding Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who was permitted a lawyer during the impeachment attempt against him in 1970. The Committee’s chief Republican counsel, Franklin Polk, recalled, “Of course the Republicans went nuts. But so did some of the Democrats—some of the most liberal Democrats.” Jerry Zeifman, general counsel and chief of staff to the Judiciary Committee and lifelong Democrat, called Ms. Clinton a “liar” and an “unethical, dishonest lawyer.” He fired Clinton from the staff when the Watergate probe concluded.
Ms. Clinton champions the use of executive agreements in lieu of treaties to circumvent the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds Senate majority for ratification. A recent example was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It was fashioned as an executive agreement because, as Secretary of State John Kerry told the House Judiciary Committee, “you can’t pass a treaty anymore.” In other words, if the President can’t get his way by complying with the Constitution, then the Constitution must be tortured to accommodate the President, i.e., to borrow from President Nixon to David Frost, “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.”
In flagrant violation of constitutional due process, Ms. Clinton also supports limitless presidential power to play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill American citizens anywhere on the planet not engaged in hostilities that the president decrees based on secret, unsubstantiated information threatens national security. In exercising this awesome power, according to Clinton, the president is not accountable to any other person, branch of government, or to the public. But Justice Black explained in Reid v. Covert:
“[W]e reject the idea that, when the United States acts against citizens abroad, it can do so free of the Bill of Rights. The United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution. Its power and authority have no other source. It can only act in accordance with all the limitations imposed by the Constitution. When the Government reaches out to punish a citizen who is abroad, the shield which the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution provide to protect his life and liberty should not be stripped away just because he happens to be in another land.”
Candidate Clinton supports presidential use of the military to spy on American citizens in the United States without warrants to gather foreign intelligence under Executive Order 12333 in violation of the Fourth Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. She supports presidential authority to classify congressional documents and to prohibit their publication. She supports presidential signing statements tantamount to unconstitutional line-item vetoes according to the Supreme Court’s decision in Clinton v. New York. She supports presidential power to spend in violation of limits established in appropriations bills. She supports presidential invocations of state secrets to frustrate congressional oversight or judicial review of government assassinations, kidnappings, or torture. She supports presidential power to refuse to take care that the laws be faithfully executed to advance a political agenda not shared by Congress.
If elected president, Donald Trump might wish to better the instruction of Hillary Clinton’s past constitutional vandalisms and imperial convictions, but his chances of success would be remote. The media, Congress, and the public would be on high alert. A President Clinton, on the other hand, would confront little resistance to her constitutional transgressions. She would be our first female commander in chief, and thus detractors would risk stigmatization as misogynists. Further, she would have her lawlessness accompanied by disarming and dulcet string instruments rather than brass or percussion associated with Trump.
We have already witnessed this phenomenon. President Barack Obama took the constitutional abuses of President George W. Bush to new levels while the media, Congress, and the public slumbered. Mr. Obama was our first black president, he speaks eloquently, and his style is non-gladiatorial. Mr. Bush had none of this armor.
Two potential calamities for the United States are looming on the horizon: wars with China or Russia over spheres of influence in Asia and Europe thousands of miles away from our borders and irrelevant to the Constitution’s foreign policy of invincible self-defense.
The candidate most likely to embroil the United States in unconstitutional presidential wars against either or both is Hillary Clinton.

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Original: Huffington Post

Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

House Speaker Paul Ryan should be removed for dereliction of constitutional duty and should be replaced by Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky). 
He has prevented and continues to prevent Members of Congress from discharging their constitutional obligation to decide under Article I, section 8, clause 11 whether the nation should resort to war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The President’s unconstitutional unilateral belligerency against ISIL currently spans seven nations— Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Libya. It is approaching its second anniversary with not even a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. It might last forever.
On November 6, 2015, 35 House Members wrote Speaker Ryan urging him to direct committees of jurisdiction to draft and report out an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIL for debate and a floor vote. The Members elaborated: “Congress can no longer ask our brave service men and women to continue to serve in harm’s way while we fail in carrying out our constitutional responsibility in the area of war and peace.”
Speaker Ryan sneered at the request, and did nothing. On June 14, 2016, another letter was sent by four Members to the Speaker reiterating the constitutional urgency of an AUMF debate and floor vote on a two-year old war already implicating seven nations. Speaker Ryan again has refused to act.
He prefers playing carping spectator to President Barack Obama’s unconstitutional war against ISIL than to take responsibility for sending our armed forces abroad to risk that last full measure of devotion on a fool’s errand—-like the Vietnam War. There may be better examples of contemptible Speaker cravenness, but if there are, they do not readily come to mind.
The Constitution’s crown jewel is the exclusive entrustment to Congress of the power to authorize the initiation of war—a decision that dwarfs all others in national importance. War not only makes mass murder legal, but endows the President with limitless power dangerous to the Republic. James Madison, father of the Constitution, explained:
“In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man; not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.”
During the constitutional convention and the state ratification debates, only South Carolina delegate Pierce Butler questioned Madison’s profundity. But he quickly recanted his doubts. Chief Justice John Marshall thus authoritatively wrote in 1804 without dissent: “[I]t is for Congress alone to decide for war.”
The Constitution’s architects were long-headed. Presidential wars— invariably fueled by inflated fears—are either ruinous or otiose. The Korean War, the Vietnam War, the ongoing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, and against Al Qaeda and ISIL are exemplary. After spending trillions of dollars on warfare since 9/11, our intelligence “experts” maintain that the international terrorist danger to the United States is undiminished if not greater.
Presidential wars might be likened to searching abroad for hornets’ nests to burst open and then demanding trillions in military spending to fight the furious hornets we provoked. Depend upon it. If Congress remains pusillanimous and idle, Presidential wars against China and Russia will be initiated within a decade or two.
Speaker Ryan has acquiesced in if not encouraged President Obama to steal the Constitution’s crown jewel from Congress. He has blocked Members seeking both to prevent the President’s theft, and to restore the stolen goods. These are crimes against the Constitution which compel a House Resolution declaring the Speakership vacant.
Congressman Massie is made of sterner and wiser stuff than Speake Ryan, and should be elected to replace him.

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Original: Huffington Post