{"id":16868,"date":"2016-01-24T18:24:52","date_gmt":"2016-01-24T23:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16868"},"modified":"2016-01-24T18:25:10","modified_gmt":"2016-01-24T23:25:10","slug":"mitch-mcconnell-moves-to-grant-the-president-unlimited-war-powers-with-no-expiration-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16868","title":{"rendered":"Mitch McConnell Moves to Grant the President Unlimited War Powers with No Expiration Date"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mitch McConnell Moves to Grant the President Unlimited War Powers with No Expiration Date<\/a><\/h3>\n
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The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013 From George Orwell\u2019s,\u00a01984<\/a><\/p>\n

This morning, I came across an extremely important story with tremendous long-term negative implications for freedom in\u00a0these United States. It relates to the fact that the\u00a0always shady Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0is moving to fast track an Authorization of Military Force (AUMF) for the President that would allow for unrestricted warfare against ISIS.\u00a0There would be no time or geographic restrictions on this\u00a0authorization.<\/strong>\u00a0Rather than being a favor to\u00a0President Obama, this is primarily\u00a0a means to ensure that whoever takes control in 2017 receives a blank check for unrestrained militarism with no expiration date. This is terrifying.<\/p>\n

Before I get into the issue at hand, some background is necessary. Many legal scholars, and indeed, even many members of Congress have admitted that Obama\u2019s war against ISIS is illegal and unconstitutional. One of the best articles I\u2019ve read on why this is the case, was published in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0in 2014, which\u00a0I covered in the post,\u00a0Obama\u2019s ISIS War is Not Only Illegal, it Makes George W. Bush Look Like a Constitutional Scholar<\/a><\/strong>. Here are a few excerpts:<\/p>\n

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President Obama\u2019s\u00a0declaration of war<\/a>\u00a0against the terrorist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria marks a decisive break in the American constitutional tradition. Nothing attempted by his predecessor, George W. Bush, remotely compares in imperial hubris.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mitch McConnell Moves to Grant the President Unlimited War Powers with No Expiration Date The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[1212,11928,11929,1211,446,2304,827,1796,862,3497],"class_list":["post-16868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-1212","tag-aumf","tag-authorization-of-military-force","tag-george-orwell","tag-isis","tag-mitch-mcconnell","tag-united-states","tag-us-congress","tag-war","tag-war-powers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16869,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16868\/revisions\/16869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}