5 ms·

It’s not empowered to unilaterally declare war without approval from congress, either. But here we are.

krapp 6mo ago
The president isn't empowered to declare war, but as Commander in Chief he is empowered to send the military anywhere he wants and start whatever "conflict" he wants, for whatever reason he wants, including no reason whatsoever. After which Congress can retroactively declare it a war if they so choose. But the US hasn't fought a declared war since WW2, because declarations of war don't really mean anything when the missiles have already been fired and the bombs have already been dropped. I hate Trump as much as anyone with a moral core should, but the President's capacity for creating arbitrary military violence and expenditure has always been unchecked.
- stasomatic 6mo ago
  If that’s true, that’s insane. Forgive me, I’m not a PolSci scholar. Nobody in the cabinet can speak up and overrule his whimsy? It always annoys me when the headlines are “Trump invaded this …” or “Trump slapped a tariff on…” while effectively it’s the US government that’s doing that, they are letting him to do as he pleases? Then the fault lies not with him. He’s not a king but surely seems to have absolute discretion if you believe the headlines.
  - pineaux 6mo ago
    Its because the president used to have a modicum of respect for the house and the Senate. So the president did have the sole right to send military anywhere on the planet and even launch nukes without any need for congressional permission. This is by design. But the other presidents were a bit less crazy so we never noticed.
  - nkingsy 6mo ago
    The movie "vice" covers this nicely. The only thing stopping US presidents from acting like kings is precedent.
    - ericmay 6mo ago
      This is simply not true and it's disappointing fear-mongering from Vice (or anyone else who publishes this stuff). The reason you know it's true is because Trump doesn't care about precedent, yet in court case after court case that he or his administration lose they follow the law, even if it is imperfect or later attempted to be argued under a different standing. The same thing that is true for Donald Trump now was true for pretty much all past presidents. Nothing has meaningfully changed here, yet we did not have these same articles before, nor did we have folks who are so caught up in political fervor that they are happy to go along with any ole' article or reporting that aligns with their current beliefs. In other words, articles like those are click-bait, and their sole intention or at least their effect is to cause chaos and doubt in the American government.
      - krapp 6mo ago
        Peter, the apologist is here.
      - ImPostingOnHN 6mo ago
        > Nothing has meaningfully changed here Legally? No. That's what OP said: > The only thing stopping US presidents from acting like kings is precedent. Now if we're talking reality, the realty is that new precedents were set (president acting like a king) which revealed that there are not effective legal checks on US presidents acting like kings (or else we would not have a president acting like a king).
        ericmay 6mo ago
        Sorry, I just don't agree with your assessment. Anyone can just say "well so and so is acting like a king or queen". Trump, as despicable and annoying as he is certainly says a lot, but he's not doing anything from what I can tell that isn't at least poorly argued that he has a right or legal justification for doing. A king or queen needs no such justification, and if one is going through the motions and being forced to respect the law (again there are shades of gray here) than there is no "acting like a king". But if your focus is on whatever he tweets and therefore he acts like a king, sure. Whatever. I mostly care about what actually happens, actual policy, actual laws and rules, not the theater around it which so many seem to want to indulge in instead of watching reality TV.
  - varjag 6mo ago
    There was a widespread belief that U.S. government has an elaborate system of checks and balances but it was not evidence-based. Kind of Flat Earth period of American political science.
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    - ajam1507 6mo ago
      The checks and balance are between the 3 branches of government. If congress wanted to stop the war, they could. If the supreme court wanted to hand the power to start wars back to congress they could. Just because they don't, doesn't mean they aren't able. The real flat earth theory is thinking that unwritten rules and institutions were protected from a president that insists on pulling every lever of power at once, but that's separate from the checks and balances.
      - varjag 6mo ago
        If one person in executive position is able to effectively override the nation's rules and institutions it sounds awfully close to saying there are no checks and balances.
  - tekla 6mo ago
    The system relies on people acting in good faith. It is impossible to make a constitution that can deal with people at all levels of power not acting in good faith. In this case, Congress has completely abdicated their duties.
    - lazide 6mo ago
      No it doesn’t. Checks and balances is explicitly setting branches against each other because it is assumed everyone is a greedy abusive MF’er only out for their own benefit. The challenge is all 3 branches are owned by the same group right now.
  - jedmeyers 6mo ago
    > Nobody in the cabinet can speak up and overrule his whimsy? Who will be overruling that "someone in the cabinet", when things start going the wrong way again? There is always someone on top, and in the US it's the sitting President.
    - stasomatic 6mo ago
      The diehards that voted last time are having second thoughts when it starts hitting their wallets. Loyalty goes both ways.
  - ericmay 6mo ago
    It's not really that insane. Don't overreact to Trump stuff - it leads you to make bad decisions and assumptions. This archaic and formal "I do declare war upon theee" is not flexible enough for the modern world and so we have found, perhaps an unhappy middle ground where the President can indeed take military action, for a limited period of time (60 days) without congressional authorization. The President is the civilian commander of the military and regardless of whether it is a Democrat or Republican we, like in other cases, give the President the discretion to make these choices. You may not like their exercise of power, but it is legal, Constitutional, and intentional and even if it is Donald Trump (much to my displeasure) we as a society trust him and his office to use this power responsibly and for the good of the American people. Even in the case of Iran and Venezuela, frankly, I think he has used power responsibly (if less effective than it should be) and for the good of the American people. We can't have a nuclear Iran in the Middle East, nor can we or should we accept thugs like Maduro running a country into the ground and causing mass migration to the US and causing problems here and breaking our laws. There are folks in the cabinet that can take action, or resign, &c., but as the Executive the president selects his cabinet and they serve at his pleasure, once they are confirmed by the Senate. This is true for all presidents and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. I think sometimes we forget, these are just people. We give them broad authority and they get to, by virtue of being elected, exercise that power as they see fit though ideally if or when a law is broken we deal with it through the judicial system.
    - collingreen 6mo ago
      If the constitution needs amending, amend it. Just "doing war" and calling it something else because you find the "right" way inconvenient or impractical is ridiculous, immoral, and illegal. If the government acts on behalf of and derives its authority from the will of the people then do it according to our shared governance. If not then the people claiming autocracy or oligarchy or techno-feudalism has supplanted our democracy are probably on to something. Tl;dr - no shit following the law is less convenient than just doing whatever you want
      - ericmay 6mo ago
        > If the constitution needs amending, amend it. Is there something about the War Powers Act that's unconstitutional? If so, what specifically? I'm struggling here to understand what is being alleged to be unconstitutional. Separately, I actually think Congress has been dysfunctional and has been outsourcing its power to the Executive and Judicial branches, but these claims about constitutional breaches seem to be, at best, wrong.
  - Amezarak 6mo ago
    You sound like you’re from a country with a parliamentary system? In the US, the “cabinet” is simply the President’s handpicked subordinates, not MPs. The President is the head of the executive, the government, usually understood as the executive, answers to him. They are not in a position to legally stop him. There are measures Congress could very easily take if they chose to, but modern Congresses are very much do-nothing and frankly regard the President taking unilateral actions as relieving them of accountability and the need to take action themselves on important matters.
    - stasomatic 6mo ago
      No, I am from the states, just been ignorant until it started bugging me. I'm sad that one geezer can turn the rest of the world against us without our say so and now we are wholesale opted in as villains. Not that the past was rosy, but it was more gentleman-ish? I am out of my depth here, just frustrated.
      - Amezarak 6mo ago
        > without our say so The election was our say so. "We" collectively voted for this.
      - bee_rider 6mo ago
        It’s not just one geezer, Congress also agrees with him (at least in the sense that they aren’t willing to take advantage of any of the leverage they have to stop him). The midterm elections will be the people’s chance to express how they feel about it all.
      - TheCoelacanth 6mo ago
        This is a problem that has always existed in presidential systems. The US is extremely unusual in having made it work for this long.
  - quickthrowman 6mo ago
    Why would you think it’s not that way? Virtually all of the power of the executive branch of the US Goverment is in the Office of the President. There are mechanisms in the Constitution to remove the sitting president, but it requires the other branches to act in the best interests of the nation instead of their own personal interests. Look at the history of every single war we’ve been involved in since WWII, no declaration of war. Korean War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, Somalia, Balkans, GWOT, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Iran. I’m not a fan of the president, but Trump only started two of those. Korea was Truman, Vietnam was LBJ, Grenada was Reagan, Panama was HW Bush, Somalia and the Balkans was Clinton, GWOT was Bush, Libya and Syria were Obama, and the last two were Trump. That’s 7 total presidents, add in Bay of Pigs and JFK for 8 and the only two presidents who didn’t start a war are Nixon, who fucked up negotiations with the NVA that may have prolonged the war to win an election, and Jimmy Carter, who tried to rescue hostages in Iran with military assets.
    - anonymars 6mo ago
      > Korea was Truman, Vietnam was LBJ, Grenada was Reagan, Panama was HW Bush, Somalia and the Balkans was Clinton, GWOT was Bush, Libya and Syria were Obama I think this is at least a little misleading. How many of these conflicts were started by that president/the US (as opposed to "joined")?
  - lazide 6mo ago
    He’s the hate magnet for things they want anyway. Why not let him go crazy?
LadyCailin 6mo ago
It’s not a war, it’s a special military operation.
- alpha_squared 6mo ago
  You're mixing up the propaganda phrases, that's Russia's stance in Ukraine. Trump's is this is "an excursion", totally different things.
  - input_sh 6mo ago
    He called it a military operation between the comment above and yours at the press conference going on right now. He didn't call it a special one though.
  - throw-the-towel 6mo ago
    As a Russian emigrant, I feel this whole war is a severe case of déjà vu. It's as if the US government is going through a stolen Russian playbook, appropriating everything. "Special operation"? Check. "$EnemyCapital in 3 days"? Check. "We haven't even started yet"? Check. "Goodwill gestures"? Check. (It's actually a common joke on the Russian Internet. So common, in fact, that it has already stopped being funny.)
  - blipvert 6mo ago
    “an excursion” is even more mad. He heard the word “incursion” and thought that it sounded cool if he posted it
  - blipvert 6mo ago
    “an excursion” is even more mad. He heard the word “incursion” and thought that it sounded cool

krapp 6mo ago

The president isn't empowered to declare war, but as Commander in Chief he is empowered to send the military anywhere he wants and start whatever "conflict" he wants, for whatever reason he wants, including no reason whatsoever. After which Congress can retroactively declare it a war if they so choose. But the US hasn't fought a declared war since WW2, because declarations of war don't really mean anything when the missiles have already been fired and the bombs have already been dropped. I hate Trump as much as anyone with a moral core should, but the President's capacity for creating arbitrary military violence and expenditure has always been unchecked.

stasomatic 6mo ago
If that’s true, that’s insane. Forgive me, I’m not a PolSci scholar. Nobody in the cabinet can speak up and overrule his whimsy? It always annoys me when the headlines are “Trump invaded this …” or “Trump slapped a tariff on…” while effectively it’s the US government that’s doing that, they are letting him to do as he pleases? Then the fault lies not with him. He’s not a king but surely seems to have absolute discretion if you believe the headlines.
- pineaux 6mo ago
  Its because the president used to have a modicum of respect for the house and the Senate. So the president did have the sole right to send military anywhere on the planet and even launch nukes without any need for congressional permission. This is by design. But the other presidents were a bit less crazy so we never noticed.
- nkingsy 6mo ago
  The movie "vice" covers this nicely. The only thing stopping US presidents from acting like kings is precedent.
  - ericmay 6mo ago
    This is simply not true and it's disappointing fear-mongering from Vice (or anyone else who publishes this stuff). The reason you know it's true is because Trump doesn't care about precedent, yet in court case after court case that he or his administration lose they follow the law, even if it is imperfect or later attempted to be argued under a different standing. The same thing that is true for Donald Trump now was true for pretty much all past presidents. Nothing has meaningfully changed here, yet we did not have these same articles before, nor did we have folks who are so caught up in political fervor that they are happy to go along with any ole' article or reporting that aligns with their current beliefs. In other words, articles like those are click-bait, and their sole intention or at least their effect is to cause chaos and doubt in the American government.
    - krapp 6mo ago
      Peter, the apologist is here.
    - ImPostingOnHN 6mo ago
      > Nothing has meaningfully changed here Legally? No. That's what OP said: > The only thing stopping US presidents from acting like kings is precedent. Now if we're talking reality, the realty is that new precedents were set (president acting like a king) which revealed that there are not effective legal checks on US presidents acting like kings (or else we would not have a president acting like a king).
      - ericmay 6mo ago
        Sorry, I just don't agree with your assessment. Anyone can just say "well so and so is acting like a king or queen". Trump, as despicable and annoying as he is certainly says a lot, but he's not doing anything from what I can tell that isn't at least poorly argued that he has a right or legal justification for doing. A king or queen needs no such justification, and if one is going through the motions and being forced to respect the law (again there are shades of gray here) than there is no "acting like a king". But if your focus is on whatever he tweets and therefore he acts like a king, sure. Whatever. I mostly care about what actually happens, actual policy, actual laws and rules, not the theater around it which so many seem to want to indulge in instead of watching reality TV.
- varjag 6mo ago
  There was a widespread belief that U.S. government has an elaborate system of checks and balances but it was not evidence-based. Kind of Flat Earth period of American political science.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - ajam1507 6mo ago
    The checks and balance are between the 3 branches of government. If congress wanted to stop the war, they could. If the supreme court wanted to hand the power to start wars back to congress they could. Just because they don't, doesn't mean they aren't able. The real flat earth theory is thinking that unwritten rules and institutions were protected from a president that insists on pulling every lever of power at once, but that's separate from the checks and balances.
    - varjag 6mo ago
      If one person in executive position is able to effectively override the nation's rules and institutions it sounds awfully close to saying there are no checks and balances.
- tekla 6mo ago
  The system relies on people acting in good faith. It is impossible to make a constitution that can deal with people at all levels of power not acting in good faith. In this case, Congress has completely abdicated their duties.
  - lazide 6mo ago
    No it doesn’t. Checks and balances is explicitly setting branches against each other because it is assumed everyone is a greedy abusive MF’er only out for their own benefit. The challenge is all 3 branches are owned by the same group right now.
- jedmeyers 6mo ago
  > Nobody in the cabinet can speak up and overrule his whimsy? Who will be overruling that "someone in the cabinet", when things start going the wrong way again? There is always someone on top, and in the US it's the sitting President.
  - stasomatic 6mo ago
    The diehards that voted last time are having second thoughts when it starts hitting their wallets. Loyalty goes both ways.
- ericmay 6mo ago
  It's not really that insane. Don't overreact to Trump stuff - it leads you to make bad decisions and assumptions. This archaic and formal "I do declare war upon theee" is not flexible enough for the modern world and so we have found, perhaps an unhappy middle ground where the President can indeed take military action, for a limited period of time (60 days) without congressional authorization. The President is the civilian commander of the military and regardless of whether it is a Democrat or Republican we, like in other cases, give the President the discretion to make these choices. You may not like their exercise of power, but it is legal, Constitutional, and intentional and even if it is Donald Trump (much to my displeasure) we as a society trust him and his office to use this power responsibly and for the good of the American people. Even in the case of Iran and Venezuela, frankly, I think he has used power responsibly (if less effective than it should be) and for the good of the American people. We can't have a nuclear Iran in the Middle East, nor can we or should we accept thugs like Maduro running a country into the ground and causing mass migration to the US and causing problems here and breaking our laws. There are folks in the cabinet that can take action, or resign, &c., but as the Executive the president selects his cabinet and they serve at his pleasure, once they are confirmed by the Senate. This is true for all presidents and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. I think sometimes we forget, these are just people. We give them broad authority and they get to, by virtue of being elected, exercise that power as they see fit though ideally if or when a law is broken we deal with it through the judicial system.
  - collingreen 6mo ago
    If the constitution needs amending, amend it. Just "doing war" and calling it something else because you find the "right" way inconvenient or impractical is ridiculous, immoral, and illegal. If the government acts on behalf of and derives its authority from the will of the people then do it according to our shared governance. If not then the people claiming autocracy or oligarchy or techno-feudalism has supplanted our democracy are probably on to something. Tl;dr - no shit following the law is less convenient than just doing whatever you want
    - ericmay 6mo ago
      > If the constitution needs amending, amend it. Is there something about the War Powers Act that's unconstitutional? If so, what specifically? I'm struggling here to understand what is being alleged to be unconstitutional. Separately, I actually think Congress has been dysfunctional and has been outsourcing its power to the Executive and Judicial branches, but these claims about constitutional breaches seem to be, at best, wrong.
- Amezarak 6mo ago
  You sound like you’re from a country with a parliamentary system? In the US, the “cabinet” is simply the President’s handpicked subordinates, not MPs. The President is the head of the executive, the government, usually understood as the executive, answers to him. They are not in a position to legally stop him. There are measures Congress could very easily take if they chose to, but modern Congresses are very much do-nothing and frankly regard the President taking unilateral actions as relieving them of accountability and the need to take action themselves on important matters.
  - stasomatic 6mo ago
    No, I am from the states, just been ignorant until it started bugging me. I'm sad that one geezer can turn the rest of the world against us without our say so and now we are wholesale opted in as villains. Not that the past was rosy, but it was more gentleman-ish? I am out of my depth here, just frustrated.
    - Amezarak 6mo ago
      > without our say so The election was our say so. "We" collectively voted for this.
    - bee_rider 6mo ago
      It’s not just one geezer, Congress also agrees with him (at least in the sense that they aren’t willing to take advantage of any of the leverage they have to stop him). The midterm elections will be the people’s chance to express how they feel about it all.
    - TheCoelacanth 6mo ago
      This is a problem that has always existed in presidential systems. The US is extremely unusual in having made it work for this long.
- quickthrowman 6mo ago
  Why would you think it’s not that way? Virtually all of the power of the executive branch of the US Goverment is in the Office of the President. There are mechanisms in the Constitution to remove the sitting president, but it requires the other branches to act in the best interests of the nation instead of their own personal interests. Look at the history of every single war we’ve been involved in since WWII, no declaration of war. Korean War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, Somalia, Balkans, GWOT, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Iran. I’m not a fan of the president, but Trump only started two of those. Korea was Truman, Vietnam was LBJ, Grenada was Reagan, Panama was HW Bush, Somalia and the Balkans was Clinton, GWOT was Bush, Libya and Syria were Obama, and the last two were Trump. That’s 7 total presidents, add in Bay of Pigs and JFK for 8 and the only two presidents who didn’t start a war are Nixon, who fucked up negotiations with the NVA that may have prolonged the war to win an election, and Jimmy Carter, who tried to rescue hostages in Iran with military assets.
  - anonymars 6mo ago
    > Korea was Truman, Vietnam was LBJ, Grenada was Reagan, Panama was HW Bush, Somalia and the Balkans was Clinton, GWOT was Bush, Libya and Syria were Obama I think this is at least a little misleading. How many of these conflicts were started by that president/the US (as opposed to "joined")?
- lazide 6mo ago
  He’s the hate magnet for things they want anyway. Why not let him go crazy?

LadyCailin 6mo ago

It’s not a war, it’s a special military operation.

alpha_squared 6mo ago
You're mixing up the propaganda phrases, that's Russia's stance in Ukraine. Trump's is this is "an excursion", totally different things.
- input_sh 6mo ago
  He called it a military operation between the comment above and yours at the press conference going on right now. He didn't call it a special one though.
- throw-the-towel 6mo ago
  As a Russian emigrant, I feel this whole war is a severe case of déjà vu. It's as if the US government is going through a stolen Russian playbook, appropriating everything. "Special operation"? Check. "$EnemyCapital in 3 days"? Check. "We haven't even started yet"? Check. "Goodwill gestures"? Check. (It's actually a common joke on the Russian Internet. So common, in fact, that it has already stopped being funny.)
- blipvert 6mo ago
  “an excursion” is even more mad. He heard the word “incursion” and thought that it sounded cool if he posted it
- blipvert 6mo ago
  “an excursion” is even more mad. He heard the word “incursion” and thought that it sounded cool