Today is the 62nd anniversary of D-Day, 06/06/1944. Which made me think. D-Day occurred 912 days after Pearl Harbor. If 9/11/01 was our generation’s Pearl Harbor, then our generation’s D-Day should have occurred on or about March 11, 2004. And our V-T Day would have been on or about May 20, 2005. But if George Bush actually won the War on Terror(ism/ists), then he’d have to give up all those war powers and the perks of being a “War President ™”.
It is a shame (in a way) that there really wasn’t a country that could claim the 9/11 attacks for their own. A “proper” war would have had so many advantages over what we are dealing with now. I don’t think there was much debate over who we should be attacking and why in 1944.
That’s part of why I suspect the Bush administration decided to attack Iraq. Their pseudowar against terrorism didn’t allow as many photo ops with soldiers and aircraft carriers and the like.
I’d be careful here, Aviation Week and Space Technology reported during the Balkans Conflicts of the ’90’s that the Clinton White House was intervening is air strike campaigns in odd ways. In one incident they demanded use of antipersonel weapons against a barn in which the Serbians had hidden a tank because doing so would do more damage to the barn and would make for better television.
Clinton was cool that way. I bet he did that. But the crazy thing about Clinton is I bet that barn loved him for it. He just has that kind of effect.
The mistake of the war on terror is that it is on a tactic and not an actual enemy which can be defeated. The tactic will never go away, just as crime or poverty or drugs, which is why the wars on those also fail. It’s amazing that more politicians aren’t held accountable for those failing policies as well.
Today I believe we are at war with Oceania, tomorrow I bet it will be with Eastasia. The only thing certain with the way the current war on terror is conducted is that we will be at war with someone, so that our civil liberties must be continually squelched in order to fight the never-ending war.
Well…
1) there was considerable disagreement at the time over Roosevelt’s decision to focus the bulk of US resources in fighting in Europe, instead of the Japanese who’d actually attacked us.
2) there’s more to distinguish the two responses than the incorporeal nature of our current enemy. In 1941 we declared war. We drafted men into service for the duration, we mobilized industry, rationed war materials, raised taxes. We put war profiteers in prison. The first investigation of what went wrong at Pearl began two weeks after the attack. Then, we accepted responsibility. Now, we grab authority.
Mark, That’s nonsense. We have *always* been at war with Oceania. And when we go to war with Eastasia, we will always have been at war with them too. You’re getting dangerously close to thoughtcrime with your suggestion that things will some day not have been always as they will be once they happen.
Interestingly, the last time war was declared constitutionally was when FDR went before the Congress to ask for a declaration. Every president from either party has ignored the Constitution since.
I tend to agree with Mike on the problem of Presidents not asking for declarations of War, though I would credit George H.W. Bush’s (i.e. the elder Bush, not the current one) request to congress for authority to use force in the first Gulf War as legally effective as a declaration of war even if it wasn’t termed such.
Declarations of War seemed to have become inapproriate since the establishment of the United Nations. Under classic International Law I would think a declaration of war would have served to protect members of one’s armed forces from criminal charges for piracy among other things. A declaration also served as notice to the world at large of the state of hostilities. However, under a (hoped for) regime of collective security as represented by the UN, a declaration of war could serve as a basis for charging soldiers (typically on the losing side) with conspiracy to wage aggressive war.