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America has a deadly addiction to war. Since 1950, presidents of both political parties have sent American troops into conflicts across the globe, killed countless people, sacrificed the lives and limbs of American servicemen and women, and wasted trillions of dollars. Yet these wars have consistently failed to achieve the objectives proclaimed when the killing began.
Enemies are replaced by new enemies, dictators give way to new dictators, and supposedly decisive victories become endless occupations. The beneficiaries are the military-industrial complex, the intelligence agencies and the politicians who confuse the exercise of power with the achievement of peace.
The American people deserve an answer to a simple question: What have we gained from this perpetual warfare? The answer is NOTHING in national security, and a great deal in lost lives, national debt, diminished liberty and shattered constitutional government.
The pattern is familiar. The government tells the public that a foreign adversary threatens our existence, that diplomacy has failed and that military action will be limited, necessary and successful. Then the bombs fall, the casualties mount and the mission changes. What began as a narrowly defined operation becomes a wider war, regime change, counterinsurgency or an open-ended commitment to demonstrate American domination. Then spying at home and federal borrowing are ratcheted up - all accompanied by the false message of spreading democracy and liberty.
Americans were told that Vietnam was essential to containing communism, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, that Afghanistan was a necessary campaign against terrorism, that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles. In each case, the distance between official assurances and eventual reality exposed the dangers of trusting government claims without demanding evidence. We now know these excuses were absurd.
And the constitutional order has been systematically circumvented.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. The framers deliberately withheld from the president the unilateral authority to plunge the nation into war because they understood the danger of concentrating the power to initiate hostilities in one person’s hands.
Yet since 1950, American presidents have repeatedly committed American forces to major conflicts without formal declarations of war. Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine, Iran and numerous other military operations have proceeded under various presidential theories of authority, vague congressional resolutions and claims of inherent executive power.
Some operations have received congressional authorization to use military force. But a vague authorization to use military force is not a blank check for perpetual war. Nor should a president’s authority to respond to an attack become a license to initiate hostilities wherever the president chooses.
When does the war end? Who decides that its objectives have been achieved? What event obligates the president to bring the troops home?
Too often, there is no satisfactory answer.
Congress has surrendered much of its constitutional responsibility, preferring to criticize a war when it becomes unpopular rather than accept responsibility for prohibiting it. Presidents enjoy the appearance of exercising decisive power while spreading the costs of their decisions across generations of taxpayers.
The intelligence agencies compound the problem. The CIA has conducted covert operations, fomented coups, participated in foreign interventions and murdered and tortured in ways that escape public scrutiny. Its clandestine capabilities can become instruments of presidential foreign policy operating beyond the ordinary accountability expected of a constitutional republic.
The author Tom Woods has observed, “No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain.” The point is not about the late senator’s personality. It’s about the bipartisan foreign policy and deep state establishment’s enduring and triumphant commitment to intervention, military primacy and American dominance of the world - no matter who is president.