VoteVet Petition Urging Public Pressure For New AUMF
I don't know if this has been covered yet, but again I have received a petition which deeply concerns and frightens me; I'm bolding the pertinent parts and again hope for elucidation from those here with the knowledge and experience to do so.
As social media has been used for propaganda, petitions now seem to be used as handy vehicles to urge the carefully disinformed public to strongly support corporate/military aims of the destructive global hostile takeover in progress.
This seems to me to be aimed at convincing the general public to begin pushing Congress to legalize whatever is done and planned to be done to other people and countries around the world, (much as a previous petition involved pushing EU politicians in the same direction) while implying that President Trump (unlike President Obama when apparently attempting anything to actually benefit the public, rather than The Parasite Class at their expense) cannot be controlled by Congress or inhibited from engaging in illegal and appalling military muggings (military attacks for personal/corporate/billionaire gain are not engaging in 'war') for the purpose of the theft of entire countries from their peoples - please let me know if I seem to be mistaken in this, as I would not have expected this tactic from VoteVets.
And ending with a 'humanitarian' social bone tossed in in the form of increasing the intake of refugees from the country in which these particular war-crimes are being committed, and the planted idea that President Obama also supported these goals, therefore making it unanimous among TPTB's Presidential puppets in both wings of the Two-Faced Trade-Off Corporate Party and therefore 'acceptable' to any blind partisans on whichever wing.
From where I'm sitting, this tactic - if blindly followed by many people - places the splattered blood and shame also on the hands of the propagandized people, in creating the pretense that this pathological misrepresentation is desired by the general American public, and gives them impetus to hold to whatever 'justifications' they have been fed, so that they never have to admit to themselves that they've been drawn to participate in such horrendous crimes.
This makes the Nazi's previously trying this global corporate/military take-over look like pikers, and America cannot be drawn down into this self-created hell-hole of pathological greed and power-seeking by the relative few which will rapidly destroy not only civilization but the capacity of the planet to support oxygen-dependent life, even if nukes are not employed, as currently seems inevitable.
Last night's strike against airfields in Syria was a limited response, but the larger problem of the Assad regime remains. We must hear from Donald Trump what his plans are.
A single strike is a tactical response to a strategic problem. What is his plan? Or is this what Republicans deemed a "pin prick" response, when President Obama proposed the same thing?
If he at all intends to use force further, either against ISIS or Assad, he must go to Congress for approval. We stand with members of both parties who have consistently said that during the previous administration, and the current one. Now they need to hear from their constituents who agree:
Add your name: Tell President Trump and Congress that they MUST vote for a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force if President Trump is going to escalate our involvement in Syria any further.
Further, President Trump must be willing to take in refugees, now that we are becoming steadily more involved in Syria's civil war. TelePrompTer sympathies for the dead and wounded are empty when he won't bring these innocent children and their parents to safety.
It is time for Donald Trump to admit he was wrong, and uphold President Obama's decision to bring in more refugees.
All my best,
Major General (ret.) Paul Eaton
VoteVets
I don't seem to be able to preview this, so going to try to publish...
Comments
Doesn't surprise me coming from VoteVets who use
imperialists like Wes Clark to front their organization. Ya, their main message appears to be that Assad is bad and we need to do something about him, playing right into the regime change agenda.
It's a false choice. Of course Congress should vote on using military force, but it's still illegal without going through the U.N. since it's not a defensive action for the U.S. It also assumes an AUMF would make it right, when in actuality it would still be an illegal attack because it would be based on lies. They say nothing about the U.S. being the primary cause of the refugee crisis and also make that seem like it's because of Assad.
War propaganda.
@Big Al
Thanks, I know nothing about VoteVets and appreciate the information.
They keep passing illegal 'laws' to 'legalize' the illegal against the public and legitimate (human and environmental) international interests to suit those of destructive self-interests and will continue to do so until some way can be found to stop them and clean them out of politics and policy.
If their blatant committing of crimes, ignoring the Constitutional rights of their own people and the Constitutional limitations of government which they must swear to uphold - and must so uphold - in order to qualify for public office, and despoiling their own and other people's countries cannot enable their removal, what can?
Of course, they've been pushing for a corporate/billionaire re-write of that US Constitution, in order to 'legalize' whatever they do and have been allowed to gain almost the corporate Republican majority they require for this by the corporate Dems...
America's Founders must be foundering in their graves.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
We shouldn't have a vote FOR AUMF
We SHOULD have a vote AGAINST AUMF. This of course isn't going to happen.
Brings up the point about what good petitions do. I believe petitions prop up beliefs of the signers yet convince few, if any, of the opponents. Either way, it's a waste of trees and electrons.
Exactly. Actually Ed,
a vote for or against an AUMF should not even come up because they have zero proof to even bring it forth. Which is why they won't do it and why they didn't go to the U.N. And even more, an AUMF should only be authorized to defend the continental U.S. and possessions. Everything else, by international law, must go thru the U.N. The U.S. cannot unilaterally take action like this unless it is defending it's territory. So in this case there is only one legal remedy and that is going to the U.N. and presenting a case.
I'm not signing...
trashed it as soon as I got it today. The only solution to our illegal war in Syria is immediate withdrawal. We are attacking a duly elected president in his own country. IT IS ILLEGAL!!! As well as immoral.
Tulsi called it correctly - (bolding is mine)
"It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government," Gabbard, an Iraqi war veteran, said Thursday night.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
@Lookout
Thanks, I hope enough are aware of the circumstances to follow your example!
Only the American people can or will stop this cynical use of their humanitarian impulses against humanitarian aims.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Tulsi 2020!
I don't understand what it is that frightens you deeply
about this VoteVet petition. I support that petition, even if I don't believe it will work and will not prevent Congress to allow Trump the authorization to use military force against Syria. It's the Congress, stupid, so to speak, not only the Trump President. But the petition does not promote per se to go to war with Syria or anybody else.
This is not a petition that promotes war propaganda, imo. I think it does the opposite asking the public to support the aim of the AUMF to give control over military actions to the Congress as a control mechanism to not give the President absolute exclusive power as the Commander in Chief to start military actions (wars of agression) by himself.
VoteVets petition asks for a new AUMF declaration given by Congress for any further military actions by Trump. I consider this an attempt to control Trump's military intentions and not to promote and allow him going to war on his own liking, which he did with his latest airstrikes.
I am sorry if I should have misunderstood your diary.
@mimi
Thanks for explaining your viewpoint, although I take it the opposite way, due to the fact that this is based on what appears to be yet another obvious False Flag designed to initiate international and US citizen support for what is an unprovoked and unheralded missile attack on a country which has just almost succeeded in beating US-supported terrorists damaging a country so that it can be weakened and with yet another elected leader to be kidnapped/killed for the installation of another proxy-government controlled by The Right Fossil Fuel And Other Corporate/Billionaire Interests;
and in working toward a 'limited' nuclear exchange with Russia and multiple other fossil-fuel-rich/pipe-line-suitable countries which TPTB evidently feel that they can somehow survive;
in the process of a global hostile corporate/military takeover, the long-standing plan for which is documented in the form of multiple countries to be invaded, or nuked where they cannot be economically captured through corporate coup 'trade deals' or subjugated by conventional military invasion;
and because of the phrasing of the petition, which you may want to read again and may have had difficulty with, this being a second language, despite your excellent linguist facility:
... Now they need to hear from their constituents who agree:
Add your name: Tell President Trump and Congress that they MUST vote for a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force if President Trump is going to escalate our involvement in Syria any further. ...
The petition is to ask the public specifically to demand that Congress signs '...a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force if President Trump is going to escalate our involvement in Syria any further ...'
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, such a AUMF can enable a President to do as he pleases, as did Bush when one was signed for the Iraq attack, and which has been used since to 'justify' spreading for-profit death and destruction world-wide, but is now said to be getting old, as it refers specifically to 9/11.
So a new one could expand the capacity of a President already granting greater autonomy to the military to do as he pleased by, perhaps, merely bringing in terrorists to any country at all which fails to serve The Right Self-Interests at the expense of its people and environment.
And this demand for new authorization to 'legalize' (the pretense being domestically only; these are still international war crimes on the level of the Nazi attacks/invasions when they attempted this same global take-over) is precisely what we should have been expecting, for the above and other reasons about which we've been reading, even from the lawless psychopaths running and staffing much of the US government and its various branches.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
oh, I think you misinterpret what I tried to say...
there is no doubt in my mind that the US missile attack on Syria's airbase violates US war laws and International War laws.
But I didn't read it as
May be it's because I have difficulties with the meaning of False Flag expression. And I might have misread this:
You excerpted the petition in a way that I can't understand the petition. I thought Congress can with the help of the AUMF also DISAGREE and NOT allow the President the use military force. Why would Congress have such a procedure of a vote FOR or AGAINST the use of military force, if it just would mean they always have to AGREE with the authorization, why couldn't all those darn Congress people DISAGREE with it and deny an authorization? They have a vote on it, because there is a choice to make between giving the authorization and not giving the authorization. It's not the fault of the petition's text, if they all vote to give authorization for military actions against any country. The blame for such a shit vote would be clearly on THEM.
I guess that's where I misunderstand the meaning of the AUMF then?
You explain all the political conditions of the US military actions and its political propaganda to convince the voters that the military actions of the US in Syria (and before in other countries) war is "the right moral thing to do", and it is clear to anybody with a normal conscience to understand that the opposite is the case. These are US military activities of choice and aggression and in violation of international war laws.
I am just not used to people thinking that most of the little people in the US and in Europe can't understand what is right and what is wrong with the US military interventions, invasions, attacks etc in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. I think most do. But what they think doesn't count and has no political influence. Their vote doesn't count.
It would be the vote of the Congressmen that count and they would all be bribed, if the petitions is based on the assumption that all Congressmen agree to give the authorization to use military force.
So, to me, it's the vote the Congress will in all likelihood give, meaning giving the President the authorization to use military force, that is the real culprit in all of it.
Trump has violated already any war laws in the books and everybody knows it. European countries weasel themselves out of their opposition to the US and NATO demands by saying the will "just support humanitarian kind of activities" and not participate with their own troops in the military activities (at least Germany said so). Of course the US has tried to criticize every European who expressed their opposition too clearly, not using weasel diplomatic language. But I think there will be an opposition. Most people didn't approve of any military activities the US has engaged in under the pretext to "hunt the terrorists".
I don't fall for the propaganda and I hope other people in the EU won't either, we just don't have the power of throwing bribed and co-opted politicians out of their position faster than they engage in violations of international law. We are pretty powerless, unfortunately.
@mimi
Hi, mimi! Sorry, I expect that I didn't express myself very clearly.
When I said that the missile attack was based on a False Flag, I was referring to the 'Sarin gas attack' being attributed to Assad.
I quoted this section specifically:
because that was what the petition itself was apparently going to say and because it sounded to me as though they were encouraging people to demand that Congress MUST vote for authorization if the President has decided to escalate in Syria anyway.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, and I would very much love to be mistaken in taking this that way. But Syria has long been on the 7-country hit list, and we know what's happened to other countries and their people under the previous AUMF, which was originally presented as being authorization for the Bush Administration simply to go after a small group of terrorists behind a terrible attack on buildings full of people in the US.
We know that the corporate Dems and Republicans are eager to invade other countries to steal their resources for certain corporate interests and billionaires and if they can claim the backing of the people in legitimizing this as a 'legal war' by doing so through Congressional channels, rather than their protesting the unprovoked attack on a sovereign country and people already dealing with terrorists, so much the better for them and their funders.
I'm certain that you know far more about what the AUMF is supposed to do than I - but what happened the last time? Corporate Dems as well as Republicans voted for 'war' and effectively gave Bush blanket permissions. And as you say, they will be bribed.
The old AUMF has been used to attack countries all over and there have been murmurs that it's old and intended specifically for those connected with 9/11 - and suddenly a new one is to be initiated for the newly named terrorist groups their attacks (and support, in some cases) have created, and the US military machine is still attacking other people's countries for 'regime change' of legitimate/elected governments in other people's countries?
As you say, we seem to be powerless - but if it seems evident that the public of any country appears to be propagandized and used in potentially facilitating the wrong-doing of their own government by not only accepting the illegal attacks on other people's countries as legal, but the retroactive 'legalizing' of any as a 'legitimate act of war', I believe that this should be avoided like the plague it is.
And even if this is 'legitimized' domestically, as has been pointed out by those far better informed than myself, such attacks and invasions are still international war-crimes and illegal under international law, whether enforced or not. And such attacks are horrendously, grossly wrong; as humans, we must protest.
Or, at the least, not go along with or appear to be supporting their crimes in any manner.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
seem so unhappy unless they've got a war
Generals and Majors always
Seem so unhappy unless they've got a war....
[video:https://youtu.be/LCW6Kte2o1A width:500 height:350]
Calling Generals and Majors
World War III is drawing near....
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
@thanatokephaloides
Am I misunderstanding this? Looking back at the the previous AUMF and what has been done, and the other circumstances, is this not legitimizing this barbarous missile attack and enabling further and far worse?
I'd be very happy to learn that I'm entirely mistaken!
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Ellen, your confusion is entirely understandable
as is mimi's because of the inherent ambiguity in the title: Authorization [blank] utilization of Military Force. That participle gets buried beneath the rest of the title.
Suggested solutions could include, specifically emphasizing by removing any ambiguity about its meaning. particle:
1. AAUMF--Authorization AGAINST Use of Military Force; in other words requiring the President to use military force
2. AFUMF--Authorization FOR Use of Military Force; in other words bomb and destroy the target as desired.
Of course, clarification is a political anathema.
@Ellen North, I mean if the President is per law the CiC
and all the Generals are per their job contract obligated to obey their CiC's command and they know what the international war law means, I think they HAVE to ask for a vote in Congress in order to ask Congress if they agree with the CiC's intentions or not. Otherwise the generals and all in the military would be forced to act against international law themselves, just because their CiC is violating international law.
What General Eaton seems to ask is just for the CiC to obey the constitution, which gives the last authority for going to war to the Congress. If the military then by default would agree with the authorization to go to war, they (the generals) are involved in violating international law themselves and may be they just don't want that to happen. A vote is a vote. A petition for a vote per se is not an approval by default of the authorization to go to war. You can vote against it. I think a couple of Congress folks used their no vote that expressed their disapproval to give the authorization to invade Iraw were rather proud of their no vote and used it later for their political purposes.
May be I really don't get it. May be I mix up the AUMF vote with that joint resolution vote back in 2002, https://www.thoughtco.com/2002-iraq-war-vote-3325446
Even if my interpretation of Congress' role in representing the civilian's power over the military's action and therefore over the CiC's power, would be wrong, I am already cycnical enough to believe that in a secret last minute midnight coup some legislators would change the wording of that law, so that they wouldn't even have the legal right anymore to legally disapprove of an illegal command of their Commander in Chief. I remember a situation where General had to explain to President Bush that a soldier has the duty to disobey a military superior's order to torture a prisoner, if the soldiers witness such a violation of war laws by his superior military commander.
Would be nice, if I could be corrected in my interpretation. Sorry for the late response. I live in another time zone and can't answer during late, late night hours, when my brain shuts down to sleep.
@mimi
Thanks, mimi!
I'd vote myself to be far more likely confused over you, especially in such areas as these.
But my concern is more over the ways I worry that this could be used than the way an AUMF might be intended to be used. And they should not be declaring war on Syria, which poses no threat to America, at all; the excuse for barging in there uninvited in the first place is supposed to that of fighting terrorists...
And while we all know that American military bombing never has killed any civilians and especially not any children, if an American plane bombed a terrorist munitions dump so that the contents could not be used against them or anyone else and incidentally released chemicals stored with them, killing civilians in a country where the war was against terrorists only, would a response of missiles into American military airfields 'as punishment' be considered appropriate, especially if the incident occurred within America, killing American citizens, with this missile attack and damage predictably causing the terrorists infesting the place to renew emboldened attacks and attempt to re-take American towns and cities which had just been freed?
And would a declaration of war following these missiles make the missile attack more appropriate, assuming that the other country had a massive military in comparison to America's?
I doubt that any of us think so. But the psychopaths running the US government and the global hostile take-over don't think like normal humans... and that's the real problem, isn't it?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
thx, you nailed it,
may be one should work to make this "political anathema to correct the potential misinterpretation or confusion about the AUMF" a thing of utmost necessity.
Though your wording still confuses me:
Don't you mean that your words "require then the President NOT to use military force, if it is an Authorization AGAINST Use of Military Force?
Sigh, I need to shut up. What is the vote about, to "Authorize or Not to Authorize" ...that's the question to have a vote over, right? Ok. I am silent now.