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If you allow your government to declare war on indefinite objects and actions you allow your government to declare permanent war. This is fucking dangerous.

api 13y ago
And that is the real issue. We are now in permanent war. The constitution is a dead letter. Wasn't it helpful to have a "liberal" Democrat in the White House to make the final stroke of the pen and abolish the constitution? Could you imagine if Bush had done this? The outcry? But with Obama in there the left is largely silent, and the right are ever-obsessed with irrelevant "culture war" crap. Culture war dog-whistle terms distract Republicans like moving objects distract cats. Not saying Bush was innocent of course. Just pointing out the continuity of the decay of America's ideals regardless of which party sits in power.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > And that is the real issue. We are now in permanent war. The constitution is a dead letter. > Wasn't it helpful to have a "liberal" Democrat in the White House to make the final stroke of the pen and abolish the constitution? I literally do not remember any president in my life who hasn't been accused of making the last stroke of the pen and abolishing the Constitution. And we've been in "permanent war" since, at least, the beginning of WWII (admittedly, you wouldn't notice it was anything other than normal war until well into the Cold War, but the "permanent war" isn't something that started with Obama, or even with Bush the Younger's "War on Terra".)
  - api 13y ago
    The OP implied that this was different-- as in an actual declaration of war. The cold war was never declared, am I right? Vietname, Iraq I, Korea, etc. were declared but they were declared on specific enemies and thus had sunsets. I do agree with your general point. We have been on this slippery slope for a very long time.
    - unclebucknasty 13y ago
      >The OP implied that this was different-- as in an actual declaration of war. The cold war was never declared, am I right? Exactly. And, perhaps more importantly, neither was the Cold War used to justify so many actions that would only be allowable in actual war time.
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        > Exactly. And, perhaps more importantly, neither was the Cold War used to justify so many actions that would only be allowable in actual war time. Actually, it was. In fact, many of things that are happening now and are the focus of that complaint were also done during the Cold War, to the point when in one of the brief moments of reactions against those extremes at the end of the Nixon/Vietnam era where the Cold War excesses had reached a perceived (local, at least) maximum, attempts were made to put legal limits on them in. E.g., the War Powers Resolution and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
        unclebucknasty 13y ago
        I knew someone would say that. Let's explicitly narrow it to domestic actions (i.e., the context of this discussion). Also, the phrase I used "so many actions". That is, my post was not intended to assert that war powers had never been abused in the past.
        dragonwriter 13y ago
        > Let's explicitly narrow it to domestic actions (i.e., the context of this discussion). You mean, like the use of the state of national threat to justify intrusive unrestrained domestic surveillance using the tools of foreign intelligence surveillance during the Cold War, to which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was a response (a response whose partial undoing in the FISA Amendments Act is one of the focal points of outrage in the recent complaints about domestic abuses justified by the "permanent war".) Yeah, GP is still true when you limit it to domestic actions. > Also, the phrase I used "so many actions". If you want to support your claim with specifics, go ahead, but right now all I see is waving around generalities, and responding to the specifics raised in opposition with more generalities.
unmei 13y ago
War is Peace.
ra 13y ago
Exactly. That's what happened... No one seemed to grok that in 2001 (or 1971).

api 13y ago

And that is the real issue. We are now in permanent war. The constitution is a dead letter. Wasn't it helpful to have a "liberal" Democrat in the White House to make the final stroke of the pen and abolish the constitution? Could you imagine if Bush had done this? The outcry? But with Obama in there the left is largely silent, and the right are ever-obsessed with irrelevant "culture war" crap. Culture war dog-whistle terms distract Republicans like moving objects distract cats. Not saying Bush was innocent of course. Just pointing out the continuity of the decay of America's ideals regardless of which party sits in power.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> And that is the real issue. We are now in permanent war. The constitution is a dead letter. > Wasn't it helpful to have a "liberal" Democrat in the White House to make the final stroke of the pen and abolish the constitution? I literally do not remember any president in my life who hasn't been accused of making the last stroke of the pen and abolishing the Constitution. And we've been in "permanent war" since, at least, the beginning of WWII (admittedly, you wouldn't notice it was anything other than normal war until well into the Cold War, but the "permanent war" isn't something that started with Obama, or even with Bush the Younger's "War on Terra".)
- api 13y ago
  The OP implied that this was different-- as in an actual declaration of war. The cold war was never declared, am I right? Vietname, Iraq I, Korea, etc. were declared but they were declared on specific enemies and thus had sunsets. I do agree with your general point. We have been on this slippery slope for a very long time.
  - unclebucknasty 13y ago
    >The OP implied that this was different-- as in an actual declaration of war. The cold war was never declared, am I right? Exactly. And, perhaps more importantly, neither was the Cold War used to justify so many actions that would only be allowable in actual war time.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Exactly. And, perhaps more importantly, neither was the Cold War used to justify so many actions that would only be allowable in actual war time. Actually, it was. In fact, many of things that are happening now and are the focus of that complaint were also done during the Cold War, to the point when in one of the brief moments of reactions against those extremes at the end of the Nixon/Vietnam era where the Cold War excesses had reached a perceived (local, at least) maximum, attempts were made to put legal limits on them in. E.g., the War Powers Resolution and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
      - unclebucknasty 13y ago
        I knew someone would say that. Let's explicitly narrow it to domestic actions (i.e., the context of this discussion). Also, the phrase I used "so many actions". That is, my post was not intended to assert that war powers had never been abused in the past.
        dragonwriter 13y ago
        > Let's explicitly narrow it to domestic actions (i.e., the context of this discussion). You mean, like the use of the state of national threat to justify intrusive unrestrained domestic surveillance using the tools of foreign intelligence surveillance during the Cold War, to which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was a response (a response whose partial undoing in the FISA Amendments Act is one of the focal points of outrage in the recent complaints about domestic abuses justified by the "permanent war".) Yeah, GP is still true when you limit it to domestic actions. > Also, the phrase I used "so many actions". If you want to support your claim with specifics, go ahead, but right now all I see is waving around generalities, and responding to the specifics raised in opposition with more generalities.

unmei 13y ago

War is Peace.

ra 13y ago

Exactly. That's what happened... No one seemed to grok that in 2001 (or 1971).