if this is war, declare it...

[sigh]

since WWII we (americans) have been involved in korea, vietnam, grenada, bosnia, iraq, somalia and now afghanistan (are there others? i'm young, i may have missed some)...it can't be denied that at least some of these were not police actions, but war

why did we stop declaring war as our constitution requires? I'm not saying that we didn't belong in some or all of these conflicts...it just worries me that our congress has apparently lost the courage to commit themselves to an act of war

(unfortunately, i'm now off to work...guess i'll look to see if anybody answered later tonight)

 

[sexy-girl]

i believe that they dont wish to declare war as such on the taiban because they are wanting this to be a "war" against all terrorism and they want this to last a long long long time


they've declared war on terrorism not on one country or one group or one person

 

[Cheyenne]

Where have you been? War HAS been declared against terrorism. That is NOT the same as declaring war against Afghanistan. In fact, everyone is being very careful to say we support the Afghan people. It is the Taliban everyone is after currently.

So, who or what country, exactly, would you have us declare war against in addition to what we have already done?

 

[sigh]

and vietnam? and korea? i'm talking about an historic pattern here, where congress has passed off it's authority to the executive branch

if we identify afghanistan as a country that harbors terrorists, and decide to bomb/invade them, then yes, we should declare war on them

were we at war with the people of germany, or just their nazi leaders? it's difficult to separate the two

congress declares war...not the president...sorry, but it's in the constitution...i didn't write it...i'm just defending it

(and i've been right here all along, thank you very much)

 

[CelestialBody]

 

[Cheyenne]

were we at war with the people of germany, or just their nazi leaders? it's difficult to separate the two

The Afghan people didn't select the Taliban as their leaders. The Taliban does not "officially" represent Afghanistan any more than Jesse Jackson represents the U.S. people. (And no, I'm not comparing Jesse Jackson to Osama.)

We bombed Germany in WWII. We didn't drop food and medicine for their people. We weren't trying to separate the German people from their Nazi leadership. Not the same situation as Afghanistan at all. We are NOT at war with Afghanistan- we have no reason to declare war on the whole country. There are many Afghan people in the Northern Alliance who want us to help get rid of the Taliban, as I understand it. They just don't have the power to do it on their own.

 

[sch00lteacher]

War was declared.

9-11-01

War was declared by the terrorists when they took control of four air craft to use as guided bombs against American civilians.

We do not have to declare war back. Congress gave Bush the legal power to use any and all force necessary to respond to the attack.

This is only the opening of things. Afghanistan will not be the only country to attacked.

 

[shadowsource]

The Imperial Presidency -

Since WW II, the US has conducted all of its military adventures in a top down manner, with enormous authroity for the president and little oversigt by Congress. Declarations of War are passe. This is indeed a dangerous situation, but it's nothing new: LBJ got "authority" to do anything he wanted in Viet Nam by faking a North Vietnamese attack on US vessels in the Tonkin Gulf. To his credit, Bush I asked at least Congress for approval when he went to war against Iraq. But the process is a mess: In the 1980s, despite repeated Congressional votes against funding for the Nicaraguan Contras, the Reagan Administration mined Nicaraguan harbors, conducted sabotage, armed terrorists and guerrillas (30,000 Nicaraguans died, much intrastructure destroyed), and even traded with the Iranians to foil Congress' will. Our new UN Ambassador John Negroponte, who won Senate approval in the stress following 9/11, famously lied about his own support of the Contras while he was our ambassador to Honduras, where they were based.
That said, we can't declare war here, and this has been well explained. We're not even at war with the Taliban, officially. If they arrested al Qaeda and turned them over and closed their camps, we'd leave them in power, though that would be unfortunate for the Afghanis.