By CHRISTOPHER MANION
As the war in Ukraine continues, we’re seeing an increasing number of questions emerge in the public conversation about the growing role of the United States. Ask these questions a year ago and you would have been called a “Putin Stooge,” but not today. Now it’s getting serious.
Whatever the reasons for our involvement — some noble, some unlovely — we’re in it. And the pressing question is not what happens in Ukraine, but what happens here at home. For it is increasingly possible, if not likely, that not only American weapons, but American troops on the ground will be our next step in the war.
Until now, the lack of public debate over the U.S. role has been little short of distressing But specters of our recent undeclared wars that ended badly loom ever more darkly as the long hard war slogs on, and that long-postponed question has to be confronted:
Should we stay or should we go?
And, if we stay, should we make it constitutional?
Article I, Sec. 8 of the Constitution places the power to declare war firmly in the hands of Congress. Needless to say, reasons abound for members to avoid that duty, because with it comes the very real possibility that those voting in the affirmative might be held responsible for the consequences.
Think about it. Who was responsible for our undeclared wars — you know, the ones we lost? Was LBJ responsible for Viet Nam? Or was it Nixon? Or Kissinger? And what about Iraq? Bush? Cheney? Chalabi?
To this day some neoconservatives blame Obama for losing the Iraq War that Bush’s “surge” had “won.” And when Afghanistan collapsed into the arms of the Taliban in 2021, Biden naturally blamed Donald Trump.
So there are a lot of reasons to avoid taking responsibility for another war that might go very badly indeed.
Would a Constitutional Declaration of War clear the air?
Clarity Takes Courage
Consider: When Congress declares war, it names the enemy. Who was the enemy in Vietnam? By the early 1970s, the cartoon Walt Kelly’s Pogo comic strip had become a popular meme: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
And who was the enemy in Iraq? Saddam Hussein? He was executed in 2006, but that didn’t end the war. And what about Afghanistan? Osama bin Laden? Navy Seals killed him in 2011, But we had thousands of troops there, and another trillion dollars of “aid” to go with them, for another 10 years. And if the Taliban was the enemy, well, they won big time, and so did all those American NGOs that raked in billions teaching Muslim women all about artificial birth control.
Now if those wars had been declared in Afghanistan and Iraq, might things have gone differently?
Good question. First off, Congress might well have refused to declare them constitutionally in the first place. After all, you can’t have a Declaration of War against “terrorism,” or in favor of “ridding the world of evil.”
On the other hand, during a legitimately declared war, when tough times come — and they always do — a Constitutional Declaration might well have added a dimension of national unity and resolve, both in Congress and among the American people.
On The Other Hand
Now there are those among us who oppose engaging in “wars of choice” which we just seem to drift into and, eventually, drift out of. We believe that wars, like every other act of government, should be constitutional. But these days, given the current regime, we must seriously face certain prospects before we go down that road.
“There’s no such thing as the foreseeable future,” said diplomatic historian Charles Burton Marshall in 1981. Fair enough. On the other hand, however, the past is written in stone. So let’s look at the past, and specifically at three wars: the Civil War, which was never formally declared, and two wars that were: World War I in 1917, and World War II in 1941 and 1942.
In contemplating what followed, we find some very instructive precedents that are not altogether heartwarming.
War Can Be Hell At Home Too
The Civil War: Lincoln’s 1861 suspension of the writ of habeas corpus was followed by military tribunals, mass arrests without trial, and censorship. The Post Office prohibited shipments of critical newspapers, editors were jailed, and those promoting “disloyalty” or “treason” were imprisoned.
Lincoln’s hagiographers stress his chagrin at such impositions, but war is Hell and its first victim is truth, if that “truth” doesn’t agree with the government’s propaganda.
World War I: Congress declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. In the months that followed, a skillful operation managed by secret agents from Great Britain’s Wellington House, the U.S. Committee on Public Information commandeered by the “mailed fist” of George Creel, and Wilson’s intimate friend and adviser Col. House manipulated public opinion in an enterprise that would make today’s Deep State proud.
Catholics who had prayerfully supported the efforts of Pope Benedict XV to bring an early end to the war were silenced, while Cardinal Gibbons cheered Wilson on. Every movie theater featured Creel’s “Four Minute Men” beating the war drums before every feature. Friendly “patriots” knocked on doors of families that had not yet “invested” in War Bonds as a sign of their devotion to cause and country.
World War II: After Congress formally declared war in 1941, FDR began tightening the noose. His Office of Censorship had the power to monitor all public media and private communications, especially among German- and Italian-Americans, while over 100,000 Japanese-Americans were seized and put into internment camps. Fr. Charles Coughlin, the popular “Radio Priest,” was banned from the U.S Mail and airwaves.
Nonetheless, former opponents of American entry into the war, numbering in the tens of millions, fell into line, once Congress passed the Constitutional Declaration of War.
Be Careful What
You Wish For…
Augustine writes that power lust is the sin of Satan (CD 1, Preface) and today his minions revel in it.
To date, with our country still reeling from illegal lockdowns and mandates, the Left has needed no war to justify its massive censorship, intimidation, and manipulation of the public. In the spirit of Antonio Gramsci, it has occupied the cultural institutions as well as the government and its burgeoning permanent bureaucracy. With the haughty swagger of the lockdown mentality, Joe Sobran’s “Hive” has used every available lever to target, intimidate, and silence opponents.
If war is the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne put it, can’t we ask, “Isn’t the state healthy enough already?”
And yet, if Biden does send U.S. troops to Ukraine, and we “Constitutional Conservatives” demand a Declaration of War, would that bring our freedom-loving country to its senses?
Or would the Left, claiming over a century of precedent, round up all those white supremacists, racists, moms who disrupt peaceful school board meetings, Catholic extremists, MAGA Republicans, gun owners, and all other “Enemies of the State” — and sequester them?
All in the name of “Victory in Ukraine!”
No way! How could they?
Joe Biden’s pals in the Chinese Communist Central Committee would gladly provide a guiding hand in the imposition of a “Social Credit System” that today has more than a billion Chinese behaving very well indeed.
Should that come to pass here, forced labor camps, remote reeducation facilities, and struggle session administrators to handle them could appear in no time.
With China as their model, hardened patriots could simply be murdered and their valuable organs harvested by the tens of thousands and sold worldwide. For the rest of us — the “lucky” ones — the regime will rely on Dick Cheney’s Patriot Act, which provided the final step in putting all the pieces together for a “Turnkey Tyranny.”
If Congress declares war, will Biden turn the key and welcome Lockdown II?
If he does, the lockdown will be permanent this time.
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