Posted on Thursday, March 08, 2012 - 11:25 am:

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Senate Armed Services Committee congressional hearing concerning pending military action in Syria

Senator Sessions: General Dempsey you uh, in one of your criteria for determining what we might do militarily, you say "you have to ask the question whether the action is worth the cost, and is consistent with law." What law does the United States military look to?

Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Yeah, if I could since, uh, I'd like to address both, cause they are related, so cost, resources, uhm, risk incured elsewhere by the use of force one other place, so you know, it's a zero sum game. We take 'em from someplace else, we use 'em for how long, and, and uh, that's the kind of issue of cost is it. And of course blood and treasure!

Uhm, the issue of legal basis is... is important though. Uhm, you know we, again, we act with the authorized use of military force either at the consent of a government, so we're invited in, or, uh, out of national self-defence, which and it's a very, uhm, there's a very clear criteria for that. And then the last one is with some kind of international legal basis, an UNSCR.

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Posted on Thursday, March 08, 2012 - 02:23 pm:

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quote:

"The vision of the founders was to set up a government that would remain small and unobtrusive via a system of checks and balances. That it has taken our government so long to get this big speaks well of the original design. The founders also knew the overwhelming nature of governments was to amass power and grow. The Constitution was to serve as the brakes on the freight train of government.

"But the Obama administration, like so many administrations in the 20th century, chooses to ignore the Constitution entirely. The increasingly broad use and scope of the Executive Orders is a prime example. Executive Orders are meant to be a way for the president to direct executive agencies on the implementation of congressionally approved legislation. It has become increasingly common for them to be misused in ways that are contradictory to congressional intent, or to bypass Congress altogether in enacting political agendas. The current administration has unabashedly stated that Congress’s unwillingness to pass the president’s jobs bill means that the president will act unilaterally to enact provisions of it piecemeal through Executive Order. Obama explicitly threatens to bypass Congress, thus aggregating the power to make and enforce laws in the executive. This clearly erodes the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances. It brings the modern presidency dangerously close to an elective dictatorship.

"Of course, the most dangerous and costly overstepping of executive authority is going to war without a congressional declaration. Congress has been sadly complicit in this usurpation by ceding much of its war-making authority to the executive because it wants to avoid taking responsibility for major war decisions, but that is part of our job in Congress! If the President cannot present to Congress and the people a convincingly strong case for going to war, then perhaps we should keep the nation at peace, rather than risk our men and women’s lives for ill-defined reasons!

"This administration certainly was not the first to behave in ways that have defied the Constitution to overstep its bounds. Sadly, previous administrations have set precedents that the current administration is only building upon. It is time for Congress to reassert itself and its constitutional role so that future administrations cannot continue on this dangerous path."

- Congressman Ron Paul

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