Constitution

Impeach the President for War-Making: Support H. Res. 922

MatthewHoh Activism, War and Conflict , , , , , , , , ,

Update: You can quickly and easily send a letter asking your representative in the House to support H. Res 922 by visiting The Action Network. Please do so, it will help.

Impeaching the President for starting wars without the consent of Congress is the central tenet of House Resolution 922, which is co-sponsored by Representatives Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Walter Jones (R-NC).

I am very privileged to help introduce H. Res. 922 this Wednesday, July 18, along with Representatives Gabbard and Jones, and constitutional law expert Bruce Fein, at the US Capitol (11am, House Triangle). H. Res. 922 defines presidential wars not declared by Congress, to includes wars of co-belligerancy, such as the United States role in the atrocities in Yemen, as impeachable offenses.

H. Res. 922 provides a framework for the House of Representatives to assert its duty and responsibility in US war-making, as obligated by the US Constitution, by providing definitions and context to Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution (the declare war clause), as well as labeling presidential indifference to, neglect of and subversion against Congress’ role, and by extension the public’s will, in war-making “a high crime and misdemeanor”. This latter purpose of H. Res. 922 provides the justification for impeachment of a president for war-making, which, regardless of political party, has proven to be a constant, murderous and unchecked facet of our imperial presidents.

Will H. Res. 922 directly end war? No. However, it is an extremely valuable and non-partisan effort to put a check on current imperial presidential powers and to demonstrate a desire for accountability for the daily and unending madness and cruelty of US wars. H. Res. 922 should be viewed as part of a larger and broader campaign to end the wars we wage both abroad and at home (and if you don’t understand how the wars overseas are directly tied into the wars here at home, then please read how the US military is prepared to jail 20,000 children on US soil). Such a campaign necessarily requires legislative and political efforts, but must also include direct action, resistance, education and alternatives to the yearly one trillion dollar military-industrial complex.

Whatever assistance you and your organizations can provide in support of this resolution will be extremely helpful. Please share widely this announcement with your friends, family, organizations, networks, readers, listeners, followers, etc, and please also directly contact your representatives in the House and ask them to co-sponsor H. Res. 922.

All press are welcome on Wednesday and press inquiries can be directed to Allison Tucker in Congressman Jone’s office (202-225-3415) and Lauren McIlvaine in Congresswoman Gabbard’s office (202-225-4906). I have pasted below the text of the resolution.

Wage Peace.

115th CONGRESS

2d Session

H. RES. 922

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

June 6, 2018

(for himself and Ms. Gabbard) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

RESOLUTION

Defining presidential wars not declared by Congress under Article I, section 8, clause 11 (Declare War Clause) as impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors within the meaning of Article II, section 4 of the Constitution and defining the meanings of war and cobelligerency for purposes of the Declare War Clause and Impeachment provisions.

Whereas presidential wars not declared by Congress under Article I, section 8, clause 11 are the most flagrant and dangerous of presidential usurpations;

Whereas President George Washington, who had presided over the Constitutional Convention and supported the Declare War Clause, elaborated during his service in office: The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress; therefore, no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated on the subject and authorized such a measure.;

Whereas presidential wars saddle the people with multi-trillion dollar indebtedness, diverts national genius from production to destruction, cripples liberty, silences the law, awakens enemies, and provokes blowback in the United States;

Whereas the absence of impeachment standards creates an appearance that impeachment is a partisan exercise, which undermines its legitimacy and deters its use;

Whereas the absence of definitions of war and co-belligerency for purposes of the Declare War Clause undermines its enforcement through the impeachment process or otherwise;

Whereas the law should warn before it strikes;

Whereas Article I, section 2, clause 5 provides that, The House of Representatives … shall have the sole Power of Impeachment;

Whereas the impeachment power of the House of Representatives is a cornerstone safeguard against Presidential tyranny;

Whereas the past neglect of the House of Representatives to use the impeachment power against Presidential usurpations and lawlessness has concentrated alarming power in the executive branch, crippled liberty, undermined transparency, and encouraged Presidents to further aggrandizements;

Whereas Article II, section 4 of the Constitution provides that, The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors;

Whereas the Constitutional Convention rejected neglect of duty or maladministration as impeachment standards in favor of high crimes and misdemeanors because the former terms were too broad;

Whereas impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors has an objective meaning based on the intent of the Constitution’s framers and British impeachment precedents;

Whereas Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65 explained that impeachable offenses proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself;

Whereas the House of Representatives has voted articles of impeachment against two Presidents, one Cabinet officer, one Senator, one Supreme Court Justice, and 14 Federal judges without providing a general standard for defining an impeachable offense; and

Whereas every participant in the drafting, debating, and ratifying of the Constitution understood that the Declare War Clause prohibited presidential wars and entrusted exclusively to Congress the solemn responsibility for deciding whether the Nation should cross the Rubicon from a state of peace to a state of war: Now, therefore, be it

1.

Defining Presidential wars as impeachable offenses

The House of Representatives declares the following Presidential actions shall constitute impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors within the meaning of Article II, section 4, which will cause the House to vote an article or articles of impeachment to send to the Senate for trial:

  • Initiating wars against state or non-state actors without prior congressional declarations under Article I, section 8, clause 11 (Declare War Clause) by which Congress itself decides to take the United States from a condition of peace to a condition of war against an identified enemy.
2.

Defining presidential wars

Nothing in this resolution shall be interpreted to prohibit the President from responding with proportionate military force in the exercise of national self-defense to actual or imminent aggression or a declaration of war against the United States.

3.

Co-belligerncy

This resolution shall be interpreted to prohibit the President from making the United States a co-belligerent in an ongoing war without a congressional declaration under the Declare War Clause. For purposes of this section, the United States becomes a co-belligerent if it systematically or substantially supplies war materials, military troops, trainers, or advisers, military intelligence, financial support or their equivalent in association, cooperation, assistance, or common cause with another belligerent.

4.

Non-exclusivity

This Resolution shall not be interpreted to preclude the House of Representatives from concluding that other presidential actions constitute impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors within the meaning of Article II, section 4 either by supplemental resolutions or by ad hoc determinations.

5.

Effective date

This Resolution shall take effect upon passage by the House of Representatives.

 

 

Stop Calling Them Nazis

MatthewHoh Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

UPDATE:  If you would like to donate to help those men and women who brought down the statue of the Confederate soldier in Durham with legal costs you can donate here: Durham Solidarity Center

These men and women are Americans. Nazis were Germans. Call them what they are in Charlottesville: White Supremacists, Klansmen, Confederates, Racists. When we call them Nazis, we associate them with the Other, we disassociate them from ourselves, from the United States, from our laws and from our history. It may be easier for some to use the word Nazi, it may ring more loudly and play more dramatically, particularly for the media, but the truth is these are our people, we need to own them, particularly white people, and so we must call them by the names of who and what they are and not give them names that make it easier for us to distance and disassociate ourselves.

If I use the word Nazi, I am protecting myself and those in my white American community, because the word is narrow and strictly defined; it’s limited, it’s grotesque, it’s hard for me to think of anyone I know whom I am related to by blood or by affection that I could fit into such a characterization, into such a costume. But, if I use a word other than Nazi, something broader, something more open, something more familiar, something more American, now I can think of people I know.

It is my fellow white brothers and sisters who have used the words and phrases that underline and validate the 60 million strong Trump movement that doesn’t just step and march underneath the banner of racism, but also beneath the flags of misogyny, homophobia and nationalism. The riposte from them will be that those historical elements and those openly racist personas apply to the fringes of the 60 million, because those I know who chose to vote for Trump did so because of tax cuts and jobs, want a wall because of jobs, want to privatize schools to allow for better economic competition etc, etc, etc… Ah, but of course…However, it is now necessary to quote the horribly influential, maniacally capable, and devilishly intelligent Lee Atwater, the man behind Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, a man who would not even be 70 years old today if he were still alive; imagine what Lee Atwater’s role would have been over the last 26 years if he had not died when he was 40? You think Karl Rove was bad? Karl Rove was an ersatz Lee Atwater for George Bush the Younger…

Lee Atwater explaining the Republican Southern Strategy, as quoted by Alexander Lamis in 1981:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”’

What it takes to defeat those marching in torchlight in Charlottesville, who are not the descendants of those of the Nuremberg rallies, but rather are American men and women walking in the steps of and with the purposes of those who committed the atrocities of the slave plantations and the Native American reservations, is to stand like those who opposed the Confederates, the Klansmen, and the Racists in Charlottesville. More so, it is to go beyond that and to speak with those who are carrying those torches, again particularly those of us who are white, in order to get them to extinguish the flames on the torches. Best would be to speak with these men and women to convince them that there is a better path to walk and that there is a community to join that does not require the carrying of torches, a community that does not have a history of hate, exclusion, and genocide, and that there is a community that fights, that marches, and that sacrifices to achieve and maintain true freedom and equality for all people.

To go farther though we have to recognize the injustices that are resident in the political system itself, and just as Northern businessmen in the first half of the 19th century were in no hurry to see slavery abolished in the United States, despite the very fanciful myth of an all encompassing and altruistic abolitionism in the North, so it must be recognized that the neoliberal policies of the Democratic Party of the last 30 years have shattered the lives of hundreds of millions of peoples both internally and externally to the United States, most predominately people of color. With this we must abandon old political loyalties, we must eschew political sensibilities, and we must break open a new economic and social justice for all people, because believing that the established political classes and authorities will do so is simply just insane.

The foundational documents that created the United States established our country within a political and economic system of racism. The electoral college system and its attendant Three/Fifths Compromise, that thing which gave us Donald Trump last November, not the Russians and Putin, is one of such pillars of that state system of slavery that to this day remains a functioning part of the US Constitution, our political process and our overt society.

Fortunately, protest and people coming together to change the system and our country for the better have also been a part of America’s history. I was in Chicago this past week at the Veterans For Peace convention, returning last night, and so I missed some very just, honorable and righteous people pulling down a statue in Durham, NC, a statue that had been dedicated to the men who were the guardians of slavery, a statue that should never have been raised. I happen to know one or two of those people who performed that toppling, better people I don’t know.

I believe in non-violence. Removing a statue that celebrates the guardians of slavery is a worthy and defendable non-violent action, and it is something I will always endorse.

My friends, let’s speak true words to one another and let’s wage peace.