Category: ranting

The media keeps calling the fighting in Iraq a ‘war’ but as the congress has not actually declared ‘war’ on Iraq it’s not officially a war. In fact we have not fought a real war since WWII. Now it’s one thing to go into a country under UN mandate—as in Korea to fight but it is another to go into a foreign country without that mandate and without the congress, the elected representatives of the people, declaring war. I know that it has been stated that this ‘war’ is not with the people of Iraq but with the government, but still, Bush should not have had the power to send our troops in without UN support unless the congress had first declared war. I think the war powers act—which allows the President to get congress approval after the fact should be repealed and the power to send us to war should be given back the congress so that one person cannot make the decision. Lets get back to the way the Founding Fathers wrote it in the Constitution. I know the who is it really war? is academic since war is an adjective here, but to refer to this as ‘The Second Gulf War’ bestows a feeling of officialism on the military action, officialism that is not truly there.

— find yourself
— express yourself
— amuse yourself (just a little offensive…)
— relax!

There is much that I would like to say about the state of the world, but these thoughts mostly come to me as I sit at home in the evening. Without my computer I fail to capture them—I could write them down, but for some reason I don’t. The end result is that by the time I get to work in the morning and have a few minutes to record my thoughts here they have become lost words… elusive shadows that I cannot catch, hovering at the edge of my conciousness.

a declaration –from codejunkie.

This morning on my way to work I passed several bridges with US, UK and Spanish flags hung from them. I also passes many anti-war signs. Bush says diplomacy is at an end, Saddam has 48 hours to get out. No UN resolution—because France and Russia refuse to discuss any use of force to back up the Security Council. I agree that bush is a war monger, but at some point the diplomacy must stop and the words of the UN must be shown meaningful, or the UN should lock it’s doors and quit pretending that there will ever be a diplomatic solution worked through it’s councils and commities. The situations may be different but there is still no defence for playing appeasment with a dictator. The people of France may not see this as appeasment, rather as ‘a peaceful solution’ but giving Hitler the Sudatenland and ignoring his reoccupation of the Rhineland where ‘peaceful solutions…’ So now there is a slim chance that Saddam will walk away—but no one really beleaves this. So war it is. Bush envoked the ‘soverign right of a nation to defend itself.’ I don’t know if that applies to a pre-emptive war… but if it does then he should go to congress to have them declare war, even if ‘our war is not with the people of Iraq’ the president does not have the right to send us to war. Congress should grow the balls that everyone has accused the Security Council of not having and tell Bush that he must bring his case to them, we already have a bad pressident of starting military action without the congress approval—this is against the constitution and should be stopped. So go to war, but follow the framework that the founding fathers layed out for going to war, they had more forsight than any of us can claim.