While Kagan has everyone mis-directed in an effort to rescue Bush's serious over reach in Iraq, here is a tidbit that ought to give Constitutional scholars pause for thought.
Why should Senators have to pass legislation in order to get a simple answer about contingency planning within the Pentagon?
At a minimum, I hope it means that we will never have anything like the AUMF, such as was drafted last time around.
More broadly and however "Iraq" and "Afghanistan" turn out, the nation has a serious, serious need to rethink the Constitutional approach to waging war.
(A) Fighting "classified wars", or just how much authority the President has to carry on with a CIA that has morphed, under Bush-Cheney, to include what some have called paramilitary operations and detention
(B) Fighting "long wars", perhaps wars of attrition or long-term, limited scale warfare (like Afghanistan); supporting peacekeeping or stabilization efforts; or handling long-term efforts in which the mission changes dramatically or escalates (such as the current 'curbing Iranian influence' or even attack Iran directly to protect troops, or such as the old Cambodia and Laos escalations).
It's not clear (to me) that the framers had these extended notions of "war" in mind, when they crafted the crude separation of powers related to capping an Imperial wartime authority.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Rethinking War in America
