[Peace-discuss] High crime or misdemeanor

[C. G. Estabrook]

Why does the administration continue to repeat its puerile and transparently
false explanation for its major war effort in AfPak?  Its chief -- indeed only
-- justification for the war is that if the Taliban take over Afghanistan
al-Qaeda will be able to set up a safe haven there to attack the United States.

That ignores the obvious facts that [1] US attacks on AfPak increase the
resistance that we call terrorism, and [2] the 9/11 attacks were planned in
Germany and Florida.

The real reason for the war is clear to anyone who cares to look at the matter
in any depth.  The following is from a columnist in the main-stream Baltimore
Sun last week:

      ...Why are we so heavily invested in Central Asia? We're told it's to
prevent al-Qaeda from reinfesting Afghanistan and using it for training and
staging attacks against us, but the real reason ... is the competition for the
world's energy resources. The Asia Times' Pepe Escobar has written widely on
what he calls "Pipelineistan," the immense network of oil and gas pipelines that
"crisscross the potential imperial battlefields of the planet." Afghanistan sits
at the center of Pipelineistan, and that's the real reason we won't willingly
abandon it. If you don't believe that, take advantage of Internet search
technology and learn what's really going on...

The explanation is found in the fact that the AfPak war is illegal by
international law and the US Constitution. The Nuremberg Tribunal condemned
aggressive war (and executed people who conducted it), and it is specifically
rejected in Article 51 of the UN Charter.  The US Constitution requires a
Congressional declaration of war for the president, as commander in chief of the
military (not the country), to conduct hostilities (War Powers Clause, United
States Constitution Art. 1, Sect. 8, Clause 11, which vests in the Congress the
exclusive power to declare war).

The one weak reed on which Obama's war policy rests -- all that prevents his
being impeached for the high crime of conducting an aggressive war -- is in fact
inadequate; it's "The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against
Terrorists" (Pub.L. 107-40, 115 Stat. 224, enacted by Congress on September 18,
2001 -- and not to be confused with the "Authorization for Use of Military Force
Against Iraq" Resolution of 2002.)

A joint resolution passed by the United States Congress one week after the
September 11, 2001 attacks, it authorized the use of United States Armed Forces
against those responsible for the attacks.  The authorization granted the
President the authority to use all "necessary and appropriate force" against
those whom he determined "planned, authorized, committed or aided" the September
11th attacks, or who harbored said persons or groups. The AUMF was signed by
President George W. Bush on September 18, 2001.*

The Obama administration must therefore pretend that it is pursuing those who
"planned, authorized, committed or aided" the September 11th attacks -- because
he has no Congressional authorization to wage war for other purposes.  He must
lie about the real geopolitical goals that underlie the AfPak war.  It is clear
that his unauthorized war is a "high crime or misdemeanor." (See US Const. art.
2, sect. 4.)

__________________
* The AUMF has been cited by the administration for matters as distant as
Guantanamo and wiretapping.  In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the majority of the Supreme
Court rejected the argument that the AUMF overrode Article 15 of the Uniform
Code of Military Justice, writing that there was nothing "even hinting" that
this was Congress' intent.  The AUMF was also the basis of one of the principal
arguments advanced by the Department of Justice in the NSA warrantless
surveillance controversy, namely that the AUMF implicitly overrode the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act.