• Asetru@feddit.org
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    25 days ago

    The House on Wednesday voted down a War Powers Resolution meant to block President Trump from launching a war with Venezuela without congressional authorization, as required by the Constitution.

    Emphasis mine.

    Help me out with this… I’m not American, so maybe I’m missing something, but why would you need to vote for a law that basically just states that the constitution is still in place? And why would that be rejected? And why would that cause anything?

    • FishLake@lemmygrad.ml
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      24 days ago

      First of all, it’s all very silly and made up.

      Second, the power to declare war rests with the US Congress. A War Powers Resolution is congress’s way of not having to formally declare war, instead it attempts to grant or restrict the executive’s (the president’s) use of military action. To say that is required by the Constitution is a bit of hand-wavy procedural farce, as the executive has habitually used military action without congressional approval many, many times, most famously in recent times with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. In the US precedent often supersedes procedure. Therefore if the president does something and there’s little to no reproductions then that something basically becomes a power of the president. Insofar as Congress having control over military action, that comes from Congress’s ability to set the military’s budget (which like lol why would they ever turn the imperial money facet off?). So a War Powers Resolution isn’t a law that states the constitution is still in place. It’s a law designed to show congress’s legitimacy and that attempts to control the executive’s use of the military so they don’t have to formally declare war, which grants the president a lot of additional powers.

      Why would you vote against this particular resolution? Lots of reasons. All of them stupid.

  • mydude@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    War is bipartisan… We already know this. But it’s good to have it exposed so blatantly.

    • ProIsh@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      I mean it looks pretty lopsided to me. Unless you’re talking the single vote making this bipartisan. Although in a general sense I agree with you, I’m commenting on this vote in particular.