Apr 9, 2018 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
At no time in U.S. History was globalist rule challenged more than in the 2016 presidential election in both major political parties. Democratic enthusiasm clearly went to Bernie Sanders, not an establishment candidate, and not to long-term establishment candidate Hillary Clinton who is believed to have used the DNC to eliminate opponent Sanders who had three times the crowd attendance. Had the race been fair it is plausible that the Democrats would not have had a globalist candidate.
Republicans kept electing more Republicans to undo the perceived blunders of primarily the Barack Obama administration but nothing ever changed. They had a long list of things that should have been corrected as Republicans retook, first the House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate, but weren’t. The Republican base felt betrayed and establishment politicians, justly blamed, became toxic to voters. That is why Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee were not able to get traction despite vastly outspending those not considered the establishment. They were viewed as the problem.
Immediately outsiders, those said not to be the establishment, skyrocketed in the polls, notably Donald Trump and Ben Carson. Ted Cruz, was able to rise because the establishment hated him even more than Trump and he was seen by the Republican base as one loyal to the Constitution. Rubio was seen as having sold his soul to the establishment and Democrats on immigration as a member of the so-called “gang of eight” and thereafter could not be trusted. Polls soon showed Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, collectively holding almost 60% of the expected voters, as they were seen as the most believable and likely to make the changes demanded by the Republican base. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina (also an outsider) began to fade.
The globalist/establishment only cover two of the more than 20 political parties in every presidential election that forward a presidential candidate. Informed voters must get the names of other party candidates from the Federal Election Commission directly, which I have always provided students. The establishment picks winners and losers long before public exposure and guide them through the election process to victory by the money and exposure they allocate.
They have been the most powerful force in elections since Mark Hanna financed William McKinley for president 122 years ago. Payback for them is their ability to guide the nation as they see the need, immunity from any negative influences on their financial empires, and market favoritism should they need it. Benefits include being well connected and the largely secret power that they hold over the government and their crowned candidates.
The crowned 2016 Democratic candidate was Hillary Clinton and had been since 2008. For Republicans it was Jeb Bush since 2013. Both the establishment and Bush were shocked when Trump entered the race and Bush could not ignite a movement for the reasons cited above. Over $100 million dollars was used to entice a following, to no avail. Jeb returned to Council on Foreign Relations headquarters on January 19, 2016, but could not get additional traction. Nobody in recent presidential elections spent this kind of money this early as he. Nobody was more establishment than Bush and Clinton. They were to be the 2016 presidential contenders. This strategy had always worked; no matter who won the election, the globalists won.
By early November 2015, the moneyed establishment was pulling back from Bush and coronating Marco Rubio. He too flooded the airways with millions in attack ads against Trump to raise his poll numbers, which worked to some extent. Still, Trump supporters dwarfed his numbers and the establishment knew that they had to destroy Trump at all costs and by any means. Their media attempted to show Donald Trump as, a joke—certainly not a serious candidate, not a real conservative, a flip-flopper on the issues, anti-women, anti-immigration, insulting to everyone, a braggart, only into himself, least likely to beat Hillary Clinton, only attractive to white males, and not in touch with reality with respect to the Middle East, and more. Certainly the constant barrage of but a third of these charges would have easily destroyed previous candidates.
Virtually everything was tried and failed. They conceded that, barring a major misstep by Trump, one of two men Trump or Cruz (neither owned by them), was going to be the Republican nominee for president. The globalist establishment hated Trump but they despised Cruz. But there existed a big difference, Trump, although formerly not a team player for them, and a bit of a rogue, could be counted on to make deals to get things done, Cruz could not. For the first time in a century they would have to work with someone not fully in their camp. But Trump is of the wealthy class so some of their goals he could be counted on to support.
From that point on the vilification of Trump by the globalists was non-stop. Still, they managed the media who would keep their “little globalist secret,” and felt confident they could make Hillary Clinton the next president anyway—too confident. Trump removed 16 Republican contenders and won the nomination despite incredible opposition from the globalist/establishment forces in both parties, probably the most opposition in U.S. History. For the first time in a century the globalists were denied their Republican presidential candidate.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Mar 31, 2018 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
As established in previous columns, the globalist managed to place people sympathetic to their world dominion view as presidential nominees of both major political parties for most of the last one hundred years allowing them to win the presidency no matter who was elected. This has resulted in our having over 800 military bases to manage the globe and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the leading globalist organization in the U.S., to place 190 of their journalist in top positions in the leading media organizations in America, resulting in citizens being largely unaware of this controlling influence.
Donald Trump said that the 2016 presidential election was “rigged” in favor of Hillary Clinton. A strong case can be made for the elimination of Bernie Sanders who garnered half the Democrats in the Iowa Caucus from long-term establishment candidate Hillary Clinton and whose crowds tripled hers.
But political scientists know that they have been mediated for decades by deliberate media exclusion of other political party candidates. The one percent richest Americans heavily finance both major political parties. Some realize that neither represent, as first consideration, the poor or the middle class.
I write the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) every October of every election year to find out who is running for president as the establishment media has largely not told me of contenders other than in their two political parties. The FEC requires that anyone running for president spending or collecting $5,000 or more on his/her candidacy for president file with them. There are always over 200 persons who do so. In every presidential election there are at least 20 political parties offering a presidential candidate.
Part of the mediated system is the agreement among the mainstream media to cover only Republicans and Democrats and only those favorable to globalism. I have always provided this list to my students. The real establishment is the moneyed elite capable of bringing to candidates the millions of dollars that are needed to win. They pick winners and losers long before public exposure and guide them through the election process to victory by the money and exposure they allocate. Voters salivate on cue over their party’s nomination with no idea how they were managed.
The Libertarian Party, for example, has offered a presidential candidate in every election for decades and are on the ballot in over 45 states in every election but are seldom mentioned and never invited to the “big debates.” They hold their own, never covered by the establishment press. One may argue, “but they do not have enough voter strength to warrant inclusion,” but in fact, they do not have sufficient voter strength because the establishment media did not cover them.
When the establishment press wishes to advantage a candidate it suddenly allows inclusion, such as when Ross Perot was “allowed” real participation in 1992 because he would take more votes from George H. W. Bush than Bill Clinton giving Clinton, the then media favorite, the White House. Ross Perot was on the ballot in every state only because he received sufficient media attention by them to be there.
Such would be the case today for anyone else running. The media vote first by its collective exclusion of those not registered as Democrats or Republicans. In political science we learn that the first election is theirs. We get to choose from those they have not excluded. The wisest, most experienced, most gifted and most honest person in America could not be president of the United States unless he/she was a Democrat or Republican.
Media corporate owners have allowed media collusion and, as we have said in other columns, they are overwhelmingly also globalist. Trump survived this media filter by running as a Republican, and vaulting over the establishment by funding his own primary campaign enabling him to call it as he saw it and win over the majority of Americans who also felt excluded by Washington DC.
So what other political parties normally offer candidates for president on the ballot? They follow: Libertarian Party, Green Party, Constitution Party of the U.S., Party of Socialism and Liberation, Reform Party USA, Socialist Party USA, and Socialist Workers Party. These political parties, with far less media coverage, still were able to get through the different state hurdles designed to reduce choices on the ballot. No one wants forty names to choose from.
Other political parties with no national media coverage offering a presidential candidate on the ballot vary from election to election. These often limit themselves to a state or an issue. They were: Approval Voting Party-Colorado, Constitution Party of Idaho-Texas, Revolutionary Party-California, Prohibition Party-Pennsylvania, American Solidarity Party-Michigan, Workers World Party-New York, Nutrition Party-New Jersey, American Party of SC-South Carolina, America’s Party-Iowa, Veterans Party of America-Texas, Independent American Party-Michigan, US Pacifist Party-Illinois, Legal Marijuana Now Party- Minnesota, and Socialist Equality Par-Michigan.
Most Americans know that something is wrong—really wrong. Today Independents, those refusing to align Democrat or Republican, are about 40%, stronger than either party. Most Americans feel lied to by both parties and the media. Presidents from either party are strongly disliked by the time they finish their second term. The people feel deceived when they elect politicians to restore the Constitution and the economy and these same politicians appear to join the globalists as soon as they arrive in Washington D.C.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Mar 27, 2018 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
For most of a hundred years no candidate for president obtained office without Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) approval. In time most Americans came to realize that something was working behind the scenes without their interests as first consideration and that both major political parties reflected this something. Initially no one could put their finger on it so generic names “internationalist,” “world government,” “eastern establishment,” “new world order,” and “world order,” came and went over the decades each replaced when recognized as being merely a synonym for the unpopular world government philosophy. Globalism is the favorite term today but establishment is still used as it came to have a double meaning, long-term service as well as world government.
The establishment, in the informed sense, is the moneyed elite capable of bringing to candidates the millions of dollars that are needed to win if they can rationalize selling their souls to the American Empire wanted by the globalist. Their people have infiltrated both political parties and they own the major media outlets. Thus their influence over presidential candidates for over a hundred years is never really covered, but all candidates know of their influence and power.
All presidents from Herbert Hoover on have either been members of, or had an approving relationship with, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) housed in New York City. This is the real establishment. When a president is not a member himself, his vice president is. Barack Obama, although supported by the CFR wasn’t on their published membership list, but Joe Biden was. Since the late 1920’s virtually all of our secretaries of state, United Nations ambassadors, and ambassadors to Russia and China have been members of this Wall Street special interest group. Moreover, CFR members largely filled the majority of presidential cabinets through 2016.
Even before the CFR was organized formally, President Woodrow Wilson in his book, The New Freedom (1913), wrote of his experience with this hidden force. He wrote: “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
No special interest group has had more impact over foreign policy than the CFR the last 100 years, leading many to question if we have but one political party in the United States with two arms. This is why there has been little difference in foreign policy between Democrat and Republican presidents. They got their advisers from the same Wall Street special interest group, the CFR. They all supported extensive foreign aid, policing the world with over 800 military bases in other lands, and continual wars without declaration or pre-established end. They all supported international trade agreements that enhanced the power of the United Nations over the U.S. and exported jobs formerly held by Americans. They all supported the bank bailouts and their management of the money supply through the bankers private Federal Reserve Bank and opposed its being audited. They all supported problem solving on the federal or international level rather than the state or county levels.
Notable political scientist Lester Milbraith observed, “the influence of the CFR throughout government is so pervasive that it is difficult to distinguish the CFR from government programs” (Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy, p. 247). Prominent political scientist Thomas R. Dye wrote, “The history of CFR policy accomplishments is dazzling” then traced in detail their dominating role in foreign policy accomplishment from the 1920’s through the George Bush Administration from their own boasts of success in Council on Foreign Relations Annual Reports (Who’s Running America? The Bush Restoration, p. 188).
What is wrong with this “secret combination” of high finance, military adventurism, benefiting media, and power lusting politicians assembled in New York City to promote globalism? The Reece Congressional Committee said it best when it noted that its productions “are not objective but are directed overwhelmingly at promoting the globalism concept.” How powerful was it by the time Congress first discovered its influence in 1954? It had come, they wrote, “to be in essence an agency of the United States government, no doubt carrying its internationalist bias with it” (Pp. 176-177).
Politics appears to be divided between two warring political parties, but because of the same-shared source of direction and pool of advisers, it is hard to believe that at the top we are really divided at all. Presidents have far more commonality and bipartisanship than has been portrayed in the establishment’s media.
Again, the principle organization of the moneyed establishment, the CFR, is deeply embedded in both political parties and they own the major media outlets, which denies coverage to competing political parties and elevates “their” sympathetic candidates through the nominating process of each party. Americans then get to choose which CFR approved candidate they prefer. It may be the greatest show in America. We call it a free election but the options they manage. For a hundred years no candidate for president obtained office without CFR approval. For the moment their power seems to be permanent—for the moment.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Mar 19, 2018 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Recently I wrote that under seemingly worthy goals of stopping the spread of socialism, then drugs, then terrorism we seemingly invited ourselves into every world conflict. Were globalists covertly using these causes instead to build an American Empire? As a college professor teaching current events for 40 plus years, I had to come to this conclusion.
Foreign policy seems to have moved from defense to offense. Now no empire of yesteryear controls or influences more territory than we. We call this globalism where the United States becomes not only the world’s only super power but also the world’s “real” government. Globalism requires a global military and a media silent on the matter. We now have both.
Today Wikipedia documents US troops deployed in “more than 150 countries” around the world with thousands of military personnel still in World War II countries 73 years later. Approximately a third of our troops serve outside the US in places most Americans have never heard such as Aruba, Bahrain, Kenya, and Qatar. And we have approximately 800 military bases encircling the globe all in the name of “our” national security.
Numerous books and hundreds of articles have identified the heart of the nearing 100-year globalist movement as having been centered on three private industrialist/high finance dominated organizations. The most important of these was the Council on Foreign Relations (1921), to infiltrate both major political parties in the US with globalist thinking, the Bilderbergers (1954), to influence and consolidate the interests of high finance and politics in Europe, and the Trilateral Commission (1973), to influence and consolidate the interests of high finance and politics in the three most powerful regions of the globe North America, Europe and Japan.
None of this could have happened without big media, once the government’s watchdog now its lapdog, becoming accomplices to the new world order movement. This too has been documented by hundreds of articles over the last many decades with the New York Times, the foremost print mouthpiece of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) followed closely by the Washington Post and the Los Angels Times. This is nothing new as CFR members have dominated all major medias for decades.
What is new for most is the 2010-11 release of 2,325,961 secret State Department cables by WikiLeaks confirming beyond question the above and more. In it “the world saw what the USA really thought about national leaders, friendly dictators & supposed allies. It also discovered the dark truths of national policies, human rights violations, covert operations & cover-ups” (The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire, by Julian Assange).
Top secret has become, by-in-large, anything that the government does not want known, which in this case, is its working for world dominion. So their immediate reaction was to vilify WikiLeaks asking everyone to delete anything on the Internet from it. “Internet access to WikiLeaks was blocked by national libraries; major international studies journals rejected all manuscripts citing WikiLeaks material; and the Pentagon stopped all emails containing the organization’s name.” The definition of national security was enlarged to include concealing government globalist activities. Anyone willing to expose them were villainized as is the case of WikiLeaks. Much of this had little to do with actual national security but to keep the public from knowing, thus preventing, our government’s future conspiring toward world governance.
To counter the globalists censorship of this material and protect “the public’s right to know,” WikiLeaks “set up a Public Library of US Diplomacy (PlusD), containing the cables and other diplomatic records.” They also published a book The WikiLeaks Files to help sift through the over two million documents for easier assessment evaluation of the mountain of information. A chapter in this book by Sarah Harrison explains how to use it (Review of the WikiLeaks Files: the World according to US empire, By Alison Broinowski).
CFR members are in every federal position of importance, in every administration regardless of political party. With the exception of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump both presidential party nominees for decades have been affiliated. The CFR is our government. It is no longer a theory. The extent of its influence was expressed by John J. McCloy, a longtime chairman of the Council and advisor to nine U.S. presidents who told the New York Times: “Whenever we needed a man we thumbed through the roll of the Council members and put through a call to New York.” CFR headquarter is located in New York City.
With respect to the establishment media’s participation, which, with the Julian Assange’s treasure trove of documentation, cannot be called anything less than a conspiracy. From this the Swiss Propaganda Research organization assembled the latest 2017 graphical depiction of CFR/Trilateral Commission/Bilderberg Group membership in the “uppity” plan to give world dominance to them. View at https://swprs.org/the-american-empire-and-its-media/.
It documents 190 top US journalists who are members of one or more of the globalist organizations identified. They exist in every major news outlet. They control your news, not only what you know but what you think about. They are the “Ruling Class Journalists”. If you are not already aware of their dominance it is because your favorite journalists have not told you and it is increasingly hard for this revelation to get into any news organ which explains why Assange resorted to the State Department dump.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Mar 12, 2018 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
As a college professor for over 40 years specializing in the Constitution and current events, I have been deeply troubled by our tendency to become easily involved in the problems of other nations and once militarily involved we seldom leave. For years I presented students a handout published by U.S. News and World Report, January 19, 1998, showing a military presence in 31 foreign countries, 53 years after World War II. These included; Germany (65,080), Japan (41,460), Italy (11,785) —even the United Kingdom (11,380).
Under seemingly worthy goals of stopping the spread of socialism, then drugs, then terrorism we seemingly invited ourselves into every conflict. Were globalists secretly using these causes instead to build an American Empire? We seemed to have moved from defense to offense. No empire of yesteryear controlled or influenced more territory than we do today.
Today Wikipedia documents US troops deployed in, not 31 countries, but “more than 150 countries” (The New York Times says 172—we have “troops in nearly every country”) around the world with thousand of military personnel still in the above named countries 73 years later. Approximately a third of our troops serve outside the US in places most Americans have never heard such as Aruba, Bahrain, Kenya, and Qatar. And we have approximately 800 military bases encircling the globe all in the name of “our” national security.
American solders are in active combat in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and “actively engaged” in Yemen, Niger, Somalia, Jordan, and Thailand. “Others are deployed as part of several peacekeeping missions, military attaches, or are part of embassy and consulate security. Nearly 40,000 are assigned to classified missions in locations that the US government refuses to disclose” (“America’s Forever Wars,” New York Times, 23 October 2017). I have no issue with embassy and consulate security.
We have four new bases in Bulgaria. New bases are also in Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo from where the US “controls ALL of the Balkans” and Manas Air Base in Kyrgystan “from where the US controls the airspace over Central Asia and most of the nations south of present-day Russia.” All once “member-states of the old Soviet Union.” And new bases have been popping up throughout Africa.
NASA has huge spy bases in Waihopai, New Zealand and Geraldton, Western Australia called the Global Electronic Surveillance System (sometimes dubbed America’s Secret Global Surveillance Network). Thus these US military bases “serve as surveillance and data centers,” on other countries.
Huge Naval bases throughout the world accommodate our gigantic US warships such as at Changi Navel Staten in Singapore. The US Navy also has floating military bases called aircraft carriers that can be positioned anywhere in the seven oceans. These are known for their incredible strike capabilities whether by planes dropping bombs in any direction hundreds of miles from them or by launching cruise missiles such as the Tomahawk. Then, there are super-carriers of which we have 12; no other nation has “supers.” The USS George Washington can carry more than 6,000 sailors (a floating fortress) 70 warplanes and “4 million pounds of bombs” (Cora Fabros, “Bases of Empire—The Global Spread of US Military and Intelligence Bases, Nov. 2008).
Bases differ in size. Some are city-size as is Ramstein Air Base in Germany, or Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, or Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean; others, called “lily pads,” are much smaller housing “drones, surveillance aircraft, or pre-positioned weaponry and supplies.” But all have some influence over the host nation (David Vine, “The United States Probably has more Foreign Military Bases than any Other People, Nation, or Empire in History,” September 14, 2015).
President George Bush best epitomized the globalist philosophy of military expansion when he wrote: “To contend with uncertainty and to meet the many security challenges we face, the United States will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia, as well as temporary access arrangements for the long-distance deployment of US forces” (George Bush, National Security Strategy, 2002) Unfortunately, this is the same doctrine historically advocated by other empire builders, even Stalin and Hitler. When is enough, enough?
But two presidents before him saw it differently; ironically each expressed such in farewell addresses just before leaving office. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the development of a “military-industrial complex,” a marriage feeding these entities, which is precisely what we have just described. Call it globalism. George Washington warned of the debt that could destroy us were we not to use “time of peace, to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned.” Unavoidable wars!!! We seek war!!
US bases within a country infer their loss of territorial sovereignty without formal political control, as was the old way of governing empires. It is a form of imperialism—even colonialism. The mere presence of military bases intimidates the host country and gives coercive power to the United States enabling it to gain concessions from its host, even interfere in domestic concerns. Some of us do not want our military to police the world, or our industrialists to govern it, or the crippling debt that accompanies it.
We would see things very differently if China or Russia had military bases in the United States or even Mexico. John F. Kennedy almost went to war with the USSR when it sought to place nuclear missiles in Cuba.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Aug 26, 2017 | Constitution, Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Few presidential candidates in the last seven years have campaigned more for pulling out of Afghanistan then Donald Trump so his decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan, 16 years after it began, is a shock to many who are tired of the globalist no-win and perpetual warfare, and in part voted for him to end it. His words resonated with most, “Afghanistan is a total and complete disaster.” In another, “Are they going to be there for the next 200 years?” In another, the U.S. had “wasted an enormous amount of blood and treasure.” And another, “What are we doing there? These people hate us … We’re a debtor nation. We can’t build our own schools, yet we build schools in Afghanistan.”
All of this remains true and irrefutable, even though Trump said that viewing this war from the Oval Office prompted his reversal. War Hawk Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, former political enemies, now love him as do many globalists. His having surrounded himself with generals, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster and James Mattis (more military influence in the White House than in decades) is said to have influenced this change. Certainly “the industrial military complex,” as warned by Eisenhower before leaving office in 1961, is well in place around him.
The Afghanistan War has cost us over a trillion dollars in treasure and 3,539 coalition soldiers and is now the longest war in U.S. History. Nothing in the Trump Presidential Speech of August 21, 2017, changes any of this. Adding some 4,000 new U.S. soldiers to the 8,400 presently there, together with another 6,000 from NATO countries, is not likely to change what 16 years and two prior presidents could not.
But all of this would change if prior presidents of both political parties, and now Trump, took their oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” seriously (Art. 2, Sec. 1, Cla. 8). Military powers are housed under the Legislative Branch of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clauses 9-17). These include all power to declare and finance war, raise armies, “make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces,” and even determine the land that the military can use for training purposes. Nothing was omitted.
Under the Constitution there can never be an unpopular war as the peoples’ representative (The House of Representatives) have total power over raising and funding the army. They must consent to the war by declaration (because they provide blood and brawn for it) and they alone authorize the treasure for it. “All bills for raising revenue shall originate” with them (Art. 1, Sec. 7, Cla. 1).
Moreover, Congress was to monitor the war at two-year intervals through its power of the purse just described. “But no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years” (Art. I, Sec. 8, Cla. 12). If Congress is not happy with the progress of the war it can require the generals to account for why total victory has not yet been obtained and reduce or enlarge funding, with time restraints, to keep officers focused—even the president—and on a short lease with respect to the war declared.
Why did the president get none of this power? Because he “had the most propensity for war,” James Madison argued in the Constitutional Convention. Kings traditionally had sole power over the lives of their subjects. Not so under the Constitution. One man would never have such power. A declaration of war gave clarity to its beginning with victory or defeat its only ending. It could never be a casual thing as it is now.
In Afghanistan war transcended from attacking, to regime change, to nation-building, to policing their country for them. In fact, today it remains uncertain as to which nation is most responsible for 9 11. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers flying into the World Trade Center and Pentagon buildings on that infamous day were Saudi nationals, as was Osama bin Laden. The country of Iraq had nothing to do with the attack, but received the first missiles in retaliation. Certainly Al-Qaeda dominated Afghanistan, but Saudi Arabia, who funded Al-Qaeda, got off scot-free.
The only constitutional power left by our Founders to the president is as “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States… ,” notice this, “when called into actual Service of the United States,” which can only be done by Congress(Art. II, Sec. 2, Cla. 1). Otherwise the military functioned under Congress, not the president. The president’s power to make war (outside immediate self-defense as in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor) can only follow the legislature’s power to authorize war. Congress declared war on Japan the following day.
There was no declaration of war by Congress on Afghanistan (or any other country since World War II) calling into “actual service” the military. Nor is there a specific two-year funding limitation on war as constitutionally required. Moreover, Congress clearly has been nullified in making the “rules for the government and regulation of land and naval forces” in this no-end conflict.
Recent presidents have usurped all of the military powers of Congress unto themselves and Trump is doing the same. It is a dangerous slippery slope and clearly exceeds constitutional authority regardless of who inhabits the White House.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
