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Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) invented a “unilateral” Syrian War, telling David Gregory on Meet the Press, “No president should unilaterally go to war without congressional authority… But absolutely if congress votes this down, we should not be involved in the Syrian war.”
There is no Syrian war right now, and neither David Gregory nor Rand Paul seem to understand the War Powers Resolution.
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DAVID GREGORY: (Sec Kerry) says for you and others not to authorize force is really hurtful to U.S. credibility.
RAND PAUL: Well, the one thing I would say that I’m proud of the president for his, that he’s coming to congress in a constitutional manner and asking for our authorization. That’s what he ran on. His policy was that no president should unilaterally go to war without congressional authority. And I’m proud that he’s sticking by it. But you ask john Kerry whether or not he’ll stick by the decision of congress, and I believe he waffled on that and wobbled and wasn’t exactly concrete that they would. But absolutely if congress votes this down, we should not be involved in the Syrian war. And I think it’s at least 50/50 whether the house will vote down involvement in the Syrian war.
David Gregory let that little one slid by — hey, what’s a Syrian War invention when they sold us weapons of mass destruction via the same little moves of the goal posts?
Paul ignored the War Powers Resolution and pretended that President Obama declared war on Syria. He did not, and yes, these little details matter. They matter a lot. The President proposed a short, limited engagement. The president does not need congressional approval for limited military interventions, but he chose to ask for it of his own volition.
The War Powers Resolution was a reaction to former Republican President Richard Nixon’s secret bombings on Cambodia. It has been interpreted by constitutional experts and previous presidents as giving the president broader authority to engage in limited military action overseas. However, it also limits executive power. Per the Act, the President has to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and the President only gets 60 days of limited engagement before he or she must declare war and get authorization for the use of force.
See? Declaring war is not the same thing as limited military engagement — per the law. This is not a matter of opinion. Plenty of us disagree with this, but that doesn’t change the law.
We should definitely be debating whether or not this has been abused (it has, in my opinion), but that debate shouldn’t grant us the right to make up declarations of war where they do not exist, especially before engagement has even commenced.
It’s a shame that Rand Paul is such a tool full of misguided presidential ambition, because we can always use more voices against war. But those voices need to be tethered to reality in order to effect change. Paul doesn’t get to make up wars just to justify his position and David Gregory never should have let him get away with this rather glaring moving of the goal post.
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