That ship has sailed decades ago. The US hasn’t been officially at war since 1945, and the congress as for all intents and purposes gave up on that power.
The speed Congress gave up their constitutional powers to avoid repurcusions for having opinions and voting for them is crazy. But I guess being able to give yourself a raise every year for doing nothing is tempting.
To be fair to the US Congress (AFAIK) no one as been formally at war since 1945 - and unless I’m forgetting anything it would actually make the US Congress the last ones to declare war on anyone.
Since WW2 everything is framed as a peacekeeping mission (when approved even if only implicitly by the UN Security Council), a civil war, helping the legitimate government in a civil war (US in Vietnam or Soviet Union in Afghanistan for example), or when every other excuse fails a pre-emptive special military operation (US in Iraq, Russia in Ukraine, Israel in all of their neighbours + Iran).
And this is a good thing. Declarations of war makes war a legitimate thing. In the past it was a noble and goodly thing to do, all of the correct paperwork has been submitted and so now it’s good and proper for you to go over there and kill those people that have different uniforms.
Also a declaration of war means going from 0 to 100 on everything. There’s no escalation and also no de-escalation. Probably not a good thing to instantly go 0 to 100 once nuclear weapons became a thing.
People often decry how war is no longer a legitimate thing because there’s no longer declarations of war. The reality is, war never was a legitimate thing. Declarations of war were just powerful people making the act of sending people out to kill and be killed seem legitimate.
Yes, the “special operations” and “coalitions of the willing” stuff is bullshit. But so were declarations of war. It’s better you think about whether a military action is actually needed rather than believing a war is proper simply because the people in power did the paperwork correctly.
Declarations of war are bad, but they were made hard to do in modern states. Almost every single countries have rules and procedures in place to make sure a hot head can’t do it over the weekend.
“Special Military Operations” undid all those efforts by putting all the powers back in the hands of a single person.
When there declarations of war we had two world wars. Are you really arguing that was better than special operations? And what started those wars? Some hotheads doing it over a few weeks. In the case of Japan, they didn’t declare war on the US until after they started dropping bombs on Pearl Harbor. How was this possible?
And you can’t mobilize a military over a weekend LOL. If you’ve been paying attention, even this air strike on Iran didn’t actually happen overnight. Just didn’t hear about it because telling your adversary your military plans in advance is generally seen as bad strategy and endangers service people. For once they didn’t tell a reporter in a signal chat, so we only heard about it after it happened. A declaration of war kind of gives away the game and makes it less likely for an operation to succeed. You never really had to do it (see Pearl Harbor) there was plenty of conflicts that happened without declarations, there was a low intensity war going on between Britain and the US right up to the declared war of 1812.
Really declarations of war were always stupid they only every really resulted in instant escalation as they’d automatically trigger allies to immediately declare war and after WWII and the invention of nuclear weapons it was finally decided to get rid of them because they’re stupid and have always been stupid.
Anyway there are authorization of use of force that applies. Congress could repeal these things but they won’t because sometimes there’s an immediate threat that can’t wait for legislation to deal with.
I hate Trump too, but arguing that he should be impeached over this is just another example of the left taking the losing side of an argument because they feel like they need to attack the other guys just because. There’s plenty of things impeach Trump for, but arguing Trump should be impeached over something that is actually legal for him to do but makes some people feel bad because declarations of war are a good thing (they aren’t) is just signing up for a losing battle.
That ship has sailed decades ago. The US hasn’t been officially at war since 1945, and the congress as for all intents and purposes gave up on that power.
The speed Congress gave up their constitutional powers to avoid repurcusions for having opinions and voting for them is crazy. But I guess being able to give yourself a raise every year for doing nothing is tempting.
The actual purpose of congress is to violently enforce capitalism by rubber stamping imperialism, policing, prisons, etc.
To be fair to the US Congress (AFAIK) no one as been formally at war since 1945 - and unless I’m forgetting anything it would actually make the US Congress the last ones to declare war on anyone.
Since WW2 everything is framed as a peacekeeping mission (when approved even if only implicitly by the UN Security Council), a civil war, helping the legitimate government in a civil war (US in Vietnam or Soviet Union in Afghanistan for example), or when every other excuse fails a pre-emptive special military operation (US in Iraq, Russia in Ukraine, Israel in all of their neighbours + Iran).
And this is a good thing. Declarations of war makes war a legitimate thing. In the past it was a noble and goodly thing to do, all of the correct paperwork has been submitted and so now it’s good and proper for you to go over there and kill those people that have different uniforms.
Also a declaration of war means going from 0 to 100 on everything. There’s no escalation and also no de-escalation. Probably not a good thing to instantly go 0 to 100 once nuclear weapons became a thing.
People often decry how war is no longer a legitimate thing because there’s no longer declarations of war. The reality is, war never was a legitimate thing. Declarations of war were just powerful people making the act of sending people out to kill and be killed seem legitimate.
Yes, the “special operations” and “coalitions of the willing” stuff is bullshit. But so were declarations of war. It’s better you think about whether a military action is actually needed rather than believing a war is proper simply because the people in power did the paperwork correctly.
Declarations of war are bad, but they were made hard to do in modern states. Almost every single countries have rules and procedures in place to make sure a hot head can’t do it over the weekend.
“Special Military Operations” undid all those efforts by putting all the powers back in the hands of a single person.
When there declarations of war we had two world wars. Are you really arguing that was better than special operations? And what started those wars? Some hotheads doing it over a few weeks. In the case of Japan, they didn’t declare war on the US until after they started dropping bombs on Pearl Harbor. How was this possible?
And you can’t mobilize a military over a weekend LOL. If you’ve been paying attention, even this air strike on Iran didn’t actually happen overnight. Just didn’t hear about it because telling your adversary your military plans in advance is generally seen as bad strategy and endangers service people. For once they didn’t tell a reporter in a signal chat, so we only heard about it after it happened. A declaration of war kind of gives away the game and makes it less likely for an operation to succeed. You never really had to do it (see Pearl Harbor) there was plenty of conflicts that happened without declarations, there was a low intensity war going on between Britain and the US right up to the declared war of 1812.
Really declarations of war were always stupid they only every really resulted in instant escalation as they’d automatically trigger allies to immediately declare war and after WWII and the invention of nuclear weapons it was finally decided to get rid of them because they’re stupid and have always been stupid.
Anyway there are authorization of use of force that applies. Congress could repeal these things but they won’t because sometimes there’s an immediate threat that can’t wait for legislation to deal with.
I hate Trump too, but arguing that he should be impeached over this is just another example of the left taking the losing side of an argument because they feel like they need to attack the other guys just because. There’s plenty of things impeach Trump for, but arguing Trump should be impeached over something that is actually legal for him to do but makes some people feel bad because declarations of war are a good thing (they aren’t) is just signing up for a losing battle.