Bruce Ackerman

Army Captain Sues President Obama Over Illegal and Unconstitutional War on ISIS

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Before I get into the heart of this piece, I want to once again applaud Bruce Ackerman, professor of law and political science at Yale, and author of “The Decline and Fall of the American Republic.” Mr. Ackerman has sustained a laser-like focus in recent years on exposing Obama’s brazen and unconstitutional penchant for illegal war-making.

I’ve highlighted his powerful opinion pieces on the topic twice before, first in the 2014 post, Obama’s ISIS War is Not Only Illegal, it Makes George W. Bush Look Like a Constitutional Scholar. Here are a few excerpts:

President Obama’s declaration of war against the terrorist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria marks a decisive break in the American constitutional tradition. Nothing attempted by his predecessor, George W. Bush, remotely compares in imperial hubris.

Mr. Bush gained explicit congressional consent for his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In contrast, the Obama administration has not even published a legal opinion attempting to justify the president’s assertion of unilateral war-making authority. This is because no serious opinion can be written.

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The New York Times Admits – Despite Going to Congress, Obama is Still Defending Unlimited War Powers

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Screen Shot 2015-02-12 at 10.25.44 AMPresident Obama is going before Congress to request authorization for the limited use of military force in a battle of up to three years against the Islamic State. On the surface, this looks like a welcome recognition of Congress’s ultimate authority in matters of war and peace. But unless the resolution put forward by the White House is amended, it will have the opposite effect. Congressional support will amount to the ringing endorsement of unlimited presidential war making.

People who take the Constitution seriously, on both sides of the aisle, must not allow this to happen. They should insist on the repeal of the 2001 resolution and an explicit repudiation of the “associated forces” doctrine. Only then will the next president be required to return to Congress to gain its consent if he or she wants to continue the war past the 2018 deadline. If it fails to take a stand now, its sham debate will generate another destructive cycle of distrust that will further alienate Americans from their representatives.

– From Bruce Ackerman’s New York Times op-ed: Congress, Don’t Be Fooled; Obama Still Believes in Unlimited War

First off, I want to thank Bruce Ackerman for writing this op-ed in the New York Times yesterday. Although the Obama administration already claims unlimited war powers in practice, this claim is illegitimate, which is why he is going to Congress to solidify his ability to declare worldwide warfare against a terrorist group that is a direct result of U.S. foreign policy: ISIS.

I previously covered the shadiness with which Obama was justifying his clearly illegal and unconstitutional war against ISIS last year in the post: Obama’s ISIS War is Not Only Illegal, it Makes George W. Bush Look Like a Constitutional Scholar. Here’s an excerpt:

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Obama’s ISIS War is Not Only Illegal, it Makes George W. Bush Look Like a Constitutional Scholar

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Rudderless and without a compass, the American ship of state continues to drift, guns blazing.

– Andrew J. Bacevich, the Boston University political science professor and former Army colonel who lost his son in the Iraq war in 2007, in a recent Reuters article.

I have spent the past several days outlining my deep concerns about the “ISIS crisis” and Obama’s willingness to employ extreme propaganda in order to once again embark on another poorly thought out military campaign here and here. What I have also come to realize is that his latest war plan is brazenly illegal and unconstitutional.

While critics have been questioning the legality of U.S. military campaigns consistently since the end of World War II, one trend has become increasingly clear. With each new President and each new war, we have witnessed those who hold the office act more and more like dictators, and less and less like constitutional executives.

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