Virginia’s very own Jim Webb, a Veteran, former legislator,
and historian, has not been out of his U.S. Senate seat for three months and is
already criticizing the U.S. Congress “of abdicating its role of overseeing the
nation’s use of military power and its agreement with foreign leaders.”[1]
According to Jim Webb, the U.S. Congress has “increasingly”
stood back and watched as George W. Bush and Barrack Obama have taken
unilateral actions abroad that the U.S. Congress should have been consulted
about.
Webb didn’t spare either party from the bulls-eye of his
criticism, saying that both parties are to blame for focusing more on party
loyalty and not enough on challenging the presidential use of military power
abroad.
To Jim Webb, our Congress today “is not the Congress,
fiercely protective of its powers, that I dealt with regularly during the four
years I spent as an assistant secretary of defense and as Secretary of the Navy
under Reagan.”[2]
Indeed, the U.S. Congress appears to have made a collective
decision, whether overtly or not, to allow the President of the U.S. unheard of
powers to conduct military operations overseas in order to deflect blame away
from themselves while reaping the benefits of any perceived “victories” on
foreign soil. That is, the U.S. Congress wants to have their cake and eat it
too.
Whether it is President Obama, President Bush, or a
president yet to be voted into office, the concerns of Americans should remain
the same: too much executive power can be disastrous to natural rights.
While we can all believe that presidents who use their
executive power are doing so with the best of intentions, the quickest road to
hell is paved with good intentions, as the saying goes. President’s Obama and
Bush may have had the best of intentions when they fought and continued to
fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the unintended consequences (as well as
the intended consequences) of their executive overreach could well reverberate
and weaken the principles that govern who we are as Americans.
The use of unmanned aerial drones in Afghanistan, its
technology and experienced personnel, is already being considered as a
government tool here in the U.S., a tool supposedly to halt crime, track down
suspected criminals, and the like. But how often have we witnessed the use of
supposedly benign technology by the government to eavesdrop, intimidate, and
eliminate the notion of privacy (e.g., wires for eavesdropping; GPS to place on
the vehicles of suspected criminals; cell phone technology to retrieve text
messages, etc.)?
While the users of these powerful technologies may well
believe they are committing a public service, the greatest action is often
inaction, not the blind attempt at a justice that slowly undermines the
principles that make the U.S. unique in world history.
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