War By Any Other Name

EASTERN WAR TIME - On December 8th and 9th, 1941, the United States Congress declared war on Japan, then Germany, Poland and Bulgaria. 

That was the last time the United States ever declared war. We didn’t in Korea- that was a “military action.”  The Vietnam War was officially known as the “Vietnam Conflict,” funded by a series of congressional resolutions effectively giving presidents Johnson and Nixon full authority  to engage the enemy (by 1969, Johnson had 530,000 American troops on the ground in Vietnam and unlimited air superiority; we still lost) 

We didn’t declare war in Iraq or Afghanistan; nor, for goodness sake, in Panama, Granada or Venezuela. We even stopped using the term “war” whenever possible, instead assigning press-release names like “Operation Desert Storm,” and “Operation Enduring Freedom.” 

Donald Trump has made a complete mockery of congressional authority of armed conflict. He didn’t even inform senators and representatives of “Operation Epic Fury” until the day he launched it. In the war against Iran, Congress, not to mention democracy, is just collateral damage. 

Democracies are fragile things but they don’t break, they unravel. While we still hold sway, however tenuously, in things like national elections, we the people no longer have any say in our nation’s military conflicts. Trump ran for the presidency on the promise to keep us out of war, then he embraced it, twice in Iran, once in Venezuela. As preposterous as it seems, he even threatened it in Greenland (“we can do it the easy way or the hard way.”) 

Instead of a toothless provision giving Congress the power to declare war, our Constitution needs to more fully reflect the American people’s image of ourselves. 

We are, at our core, a nation of peace. We need a Constitutional amendment to inculcate that. How about an amendment that reads “Hostile military action by the United States against any country,  its territories or possessions, is forbidden without a joint resolution of Congress allowing such action.” Let’s flip the switch.

(Jack Shakely is president emeritus of the California Community in Los Angeles and a contributor to CityWatchLA.com.)