The Emperor Is the Law

[Recently], Hillary Clinton told the House of Representatives that "the White House would forge ahead with military action in Libya even if Congress passed a resolution constraining the mission." [...] As Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman noted, Clinton was not relying on the War Powers Resolution of 1973 (WPR); to the contrary, her position is that the Obama administration has the power to wage war in violation even of the permissive dictates of that Resolution.

Glenn Greenwald

Which is, after all, asserting the idea he has long championed - that the President has ultimate power.

I defy anyone to identify any differences between the administration's view of its own authority -- that it has the right to ignore Congressional restrictions on its war powers -- and the crux of Bush radicalism as expressed in the once-controversial memos by John Yoo and the Bush DOJ. There is none. [...] If anything, one could argue that [Bush counsel John] Yoo's theory of unilateral war-making was more reasonable, as it was at least tied to an actual attack on the U.S.: the 9/11 attacks. Here, the Obama administration is arrogating unto the President the unilateral, unrestrained right to start wars in all circumstances, whether or not the U.S. is attacked.

But what Clinton's stated view really harkens back to is the Iran-contra scandal, when the Reagan administration funded the Nicaraguan contras despite an express Congressional prohibition on doing so, and then took the position -- when exposed -- that Congress has no power to restrict its national security decisions. That position was pioneered in 1987 by then GOP Rep. Dick Cheney.

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[L]eave aside the fact that both Obama and Clinton as Senators and presidential candidates insisted exactly the opposite when they specifically argued that Congress could legally require Bush to obtain Congressional approval before bombing Iran and generally that Presidents have no power to start wars without a vote from Congress. It was true during the Bush years and it is true now that this is an absolute distortion of the "Commander-in-Chief" power of Article II.

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[O]nce a government engages long enough or pervasively enough in a certain form of criminality or corruption, the citizenry is trained to accept it and collectively ceases to resist it, even learns to embrace it. to wage war in violation even of the permissive dictates of that Resolution. And, of course, the Obama administration has indeed involved the U.S. in a major, risky war, in a country that has neither attacked us nor threatened to, without even a pretense of Congressional approval or any form of democratic consent.

Yes, and that’s pretty much where we are. Let me specifically stress a point that Greenwald makes in this article, because it appears to not be very clear to many people:

The "Commander-in-Chief" power means nothing more than, once a war starts, the President is the top General with the power to decide how it is tactically prosecuted.

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Alexander Hamilton, the founder most enthusiastic of executive power [emphasized in constructing the Constitution that the] British King could start wars on his own; the American President cannot, as that power is reserved exclusively for Congress.

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The one and only safeguard against tyranny is that political leaders are subjected to the constraints of the Constitution and law (we're a nation of laws or a nation of men, said Adams: you must choose).

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It may be common, and it may produce good outcomes, and it may be a longstanding problem, but there's no question that Obama's commencement of this war without Congressional approval, and especially Hillary Clinton's announcement that Congress has no power to restrict the President in any way, are acts of pure imperial lawlessness.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.