There Is Only One Way to Stop Obama from Setting Jihadists Free
Short of impeachment, there is really nothing Congress can do.
Short of impeachment, there is really nothing Congress can do.
Your not going to like this.
Our commander-in-chief is recklessly releasing jihadists from Guantanamo Bay. The president’s Bush-deranged base is buoyed by the all-out effort to fulfill his vow to shut down the detention camp. But the vast majority of Americans remain opposed, and increasingly alarmed. The pace of releases has surged since November’s midterm elections, with over two-dozen detainees sprung — aiding the enemy even as the terror threat intensifies.
But if you want it stopped, the president has to be impeached.
Yes, yes, I know you don’t want to hear that. I have the scars to prove it. A few months back, Beltway Republicans got even more annoyed than Obama Democrats when my book, Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment, was published. Contrary to what you’d infer from all the shrieking, I actually argued that it would be a big mistake to impeach President Obama absent strong public support for his removal. And as I conceded, that level of public support does not exist and never will exist unless a compelling political case for impeachment is made.
Republicans have less than no interest in making the case. Maybe that is as it should be, or maybe (as I fear) they are being shortsighted. But it is not cowardice. In fact, it probably tells us more about how the country has changed than about Republicans. The latter know that if they even mention the dread I-word, they will be demagogued as racists. They fear this will translate into being routed in elections.
That’s fair enough: Refraining from taking an unpopular position — calculating that one has no chance of swaying public opinion — is a perfectly rational, mature political decision. But what is neither rational nor mature is pretending that tough choices do not have serious downsides. They always do, even when the right choice is made. That is what makes them tough. As we’re seeing, the decision not to try building a political case for President Obama’s removal has extraordinarily serious downsides.
That’s why I wrote the book: Not so much to call for President Obama’s impeachment as to explain that, in the American constitutional system,impeachment is the only remedy for certain egregious abuses of power.
If you foreswear impeachment under any circumstances, if you won’t even hold it out as a credible threat, then you are going to get egregious abuses of power. Indeed, the abuses are sure to become more egregious in the last two years of a radical administration: The president knows his time is short and he no longer has the incentive of elections — his own or those that determine his influence over Congress — to rein in his radicalism.
Presidents of the United States have enormous power, particularly over the conduct of war and foreign policy. These are areas where Congress’s competing power of the purse — the other major constitutional check on executive malfeasance — is often of limited value.
The Constitution makes the president commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Under longstanding American law, that makes the president supreme in the conduct of warfare, which very much includes the disposition of captured enemy combatants. Congress has the power to declare war and to fund, or cut off funding, for combat operations; but it has no authority to conduct the war — that’s the commander’s job.
Congress is impotent to direct the president regarding what enemy combatants he may, or may not, release — just as it has no way of forcing the president to attack a particular target or apprehend a particular enemy operative.
Moreover, as chief executive, the president has near plenary authority over the conduct of foreign policy. Thomas Jefferson was as fearful of an imperial presidency as any of the Founders; yet he acknowledged, “The transaction of business with foreign nations is executive altogether; it belongs, then, to the head of that department, except as to such portions of it as are specially submitted to the senate. Exceptions are to be construed strictly.” John Marshall was a great rival of Jefferson’s, but on this point they were in sync: “The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external affairs, and its sole representative with foreign nations,” said Marshall. “The [executive] department is entrusted with the whole foreign intercourse of the nation.”
Jefferson’s strictly construed exceptions to the president’s foreign-affairs primacy will not help us halt the release of terrorists from Gitmo. This is not a treaty situation, so the Senate’s power to deny ratification of international agreements is irrelevant. And while Congress may deny funding for foolish executive initiatives — Republicans, for example, did not have to sign off on Obama’s provision of military aid to the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt (although they did) — the president does not need funding to release prisoners. Doing so actually saves money . . . at least until they blow something up.
Short of impeachment, there is really nothing Congress can do.
Republican senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire is one of our country’s most serious thinkers on national security and the legal aspects of our war against jihadist terror. Duly horrified by the president’s unconscionable releases of anti-American jihadists from Gitmo, Senator Ayotte proposed legislation this week to prohibit the release of detainees who have been assessed as likely to return to terrorist activity (i.e., most of the remaining 122). She would also forbid transfers to countries such as Yemen that are al-Qaeda strongholds.
I wish it had a prayer of working. It doesn’t.
My comments: So, Obama continues to BLACKMAIL the entire Nation, Congress and the people with his Lawless Acts. And this will continue for TWO MORE YEARS.
No comments:
Post a Comment