Enabling a Future American Dictator

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Enabling a Future American Dictator  
      
These are truly troubling days for liberty in the United States. 

Last week the 60 day deadline for the president to gain congressional 
approval for our military engagement in Libya under the War Powers 
Resolution came and went. The media scarcely noticed.  The bombings 
continued.  We had a hearing on Capitol Hill on the subject, but the 
administration refuses to bother with the legality of its new war.  It is 
unclear if Mr. Obama will ever obtain congressional consent, and 
astonishingly it is being argued that he doesn't need it.

Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution begs to differ.  It clearly states 
that the power to declare war rests within the legislative branch - the 
branch closest to the people.  The founders were a war-weary people, and the 
requirement that it would take an act of Congress to go to war was 
intentional.  They believed war was not to be entered into lightly, so they 
resisted granting such decision making authority to one person. They 
objected to absolute warmaking power granted to Kings. It would be 
incredibly naïve to think a dictator could not or would not wrest power in 
this country.  

Our Presidents can now, on their own: order assassinations, including 
American citizens; operate secret military tribunals; engage in torture; 
enforce indefinite imprisonment without due process; order searches and 
seizures without proper warrants, gutting the 4th Amendment; ignore the 60 
day rule for reporting to the Congress the nature of any military operations 
as required by the War Power Resolution; continue the Patriot Act abuses 
without oversight; wage war at will; and treat all Americans as suspected 
terrorists at airports with TSA groping and nude x-rays. 

Americans who are not alarmed by all of this are either not paying close 
attention, or are too trusting of current government officials to be 
concerned.  Those in power right now might be trustworthy, upstanding 
people.  But what of the leaders of the future?  They will inherit all the 
additional powers we cede to the current position holders.  Can we trust 
that they will not take advantage?  Today's best intentions create loopholes 
and opportunities for tomorrow's tyrants. 

Perhaps the most troubling power grab of late is the mission creep 
associated with the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  
Initiated as targeted strikes against the perpetrators of 9/11, a decade 
later we are still at war.  With whom?  Last week Congress passed a Defense 
Authorization bill with some very disturbing language that explicitly 
extends the president's war powers to just about anybody.  Section 1034 of 
that bill states that we are at war with the Taliban, al Qaeda, and 
associated forces.  Who are the associated forces?  It also includes anyone 
who has supported hostilities in aid of an organization that substantially 
supports these associated forces.  This authorization is not limited by 
geography, and it has no sunset provision.  It doesn't matter if these 
associated forces are American citizens.  Your constitutional rights no 
longer apply when the United States is "at war" with you.  Would it be so 
hard for someone in the government to target a political enemy and connect 
them to al Qaeda, however tenuously, and have them declared an associated 
force?
  
My colleague Congressman Justin Amash spearheaded an effort to have this 
troubling language removed, but unfortunately it failed by a vote of 234 to 
187.  It is unfortunate indeed, that so many in Congress accept unlimited 
warmaking authority in the hands of the executive branch.

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