Eric Zuesse: How U.S. Congress Just Voted to Make War Permanent

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Written by Eric Zuesse

In a bold display of the bipartisan determination of the U.S. Congress after 9/11 to lock-in forever the bonanza that the Congress temporarily granted to America’s ‘Defense’ industries (manufacturers of war-weapons, etc.), the proposed congressional Resolution, on July 19th, “On the Amendment (Paul Amdt. No. 222 )”, aiming “To express the sense of Congress that Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty does not supersede the constitutional requirement that Congress declare war before the United States engages in war,” was voted down in the U.S. Senate, by the huge bipartisan margin of 83 Nays to 16 Yeas. All of the 16 Yeas were Republican Senators. However, 32 Republicans, and both of the Senate’s ‘Independent’ Senators (Sanders of Vermont, and King of Maine), also voted Nay — they voted that the U.S. Constitution’s clause which demands a congressional authorization before the U.S. President may send U.S. forces abroad into a war, be nullified if NATO declares war. (For example: if NATO declares war against Russia regarding Ukraine — which COULD happen — then America is automatically at war against Russia, and no congressional authorization is needed in order for the U.S. to immediately launch a nuclear invasion of Russia.) So: this was anything but a partisan vote in the Congress: 83 U.S. Senators, of both and of no Parties, endorsed it. But did the American people endorse it? The American people had voted those 83 U.S. Senators into office. Why did the American people do that? Was this because the same ‘Defense’ contractors who had funded these Senators’ political careers has ALSO funded the opposite Party’s nominees who were running against them? Do billionaires need to fund both of the Parties in order for such a thing to happen? Is this what America’s ‘democracy’ has now come down to?

On 17 February 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden issued his “Notice on the Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Libya”, and — though around half of U.S. Senators have grandstanded publicly against U.S. arms-sales into Middle-Eastern wars — he publicly announced that America will continue the “National Emergency” which President Obama had announced in 2011 to get rid of Muammar Gaddafi (even though Gaddafi did become assassinated on 11 October 2011). Congress did nothing to object to Biden’s continuation of that authorization by Biden, for Biden to continue America’s participation in those wars. Then, finally, on 13 June 2023, the Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar headlined “Gosar Introduces Legislation Terminating Libya National Emergency Declaration”, and reported that Gosar had just introduced  “H.J. Res. 70, legislation terminating the national emergency related to Libya declared by President Obama on February 25, 2011 in Executive Order 13566.” It’s all for show, even if he does support it, because for many decades now, the U.S. Congress never votes against America’s armaments contractors. In fact, Gosar’s press release admitted that “There are currently 41 declared national emergencies still in effect in the United States.” His link there shows that those ‘U.S. national emergencies’ are against: Iran, Nicaragua, South Africa, Libya (1986), Panama, Iraq (1990), Chemical and Biological Weapons (of which the U.S. has been the biggest producer — but this 1990 Executive Order 12735 was directed only against foreign countries) — Haiti, Serbia and Montenegro, UNITA, Bosnia and Herzegovina, “Terrorists,” Cuba, Burma, Sudan, Serbia and Montenegro again, Taliban, Sierra Leone, Western Balkans, “Terrorists” again, Zimbabwe, Iraq again (2003), Syria, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Belarus, DR Congo, Lebanon, North Korea, Somalia, Libya (2011), Russians in Ukraine (2014), South Sudan, Central African Republic, Venezuela, Burundi, Nicaragua again, Mali, China, China again, Burma again, Russia again, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and Russia again. Others were against things, such as narcotics. However the ones that I listed were already 45 “U.S. National Emergencies,” in which the President could bring the U.S. to war regardless of the U.S. Congress. And, of course, since all of these ‘public officials’ depend essentally on America’s billionaires, those people are the ones whom the U.S. Government actually represents. (Some people say that America is a republic instead of a democracy, but the real question is: Whom do the representatives actually represent?)

Anyway: what’s at issue here is not how to interpret the Constitution, but instead how to ignore the Constitution in such a way that the U.S. Supreme Court ignores, which is the way in which U.S. Presidents agree with both of the houses in Congress and with both of the Parties in Congress, to ignore the Constitution, and to cover it over with obfuscatory excuses that, to casual observers, might seem credible, but that nonetheless are as phony as a three dollar bill and are meant only to fool the public’s voting fools so as to continue the now longstanding routine ignorance and distortions about what the actual authors of the U.S. Constitution had written and said that pertains to each and every clause that those Founders collectively wrote and embodied in our Contitution and in each one of its Amendments.These matters have instead become ones that are debated about only by an elite of ‘experts’ who have become accredited by representatives of America’s billionaires in order to keep that debate as obfuscatory as possible and as alien as possible to the interests of the public, so that the U.S. Constitution ‘means’ only what actual representatives of today’s billionaires find acceptable for it to mean. However, now, in particulars such as are discussed here, the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t even become involved, at all. By Executive and Legislative fiat, the U.S. Constitution becomes, effectively, just ignored, in such matters — the ones that are of vital importance to America’s billionaires.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

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