Comment on Who decides when the US goes to "war"

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setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

You’re kind of drifting a little bit. I responding to “just the president deciding”- the “just” doing some heavy lifting to frame it as a unilateral decision without the involvement of Congress.

The only difference is that Congress decided to vote on our involvement from 1973 onwards.

That is basically completely the opposite from “just” the President deciding. It is involving an entire other branch in the decision. It’s not something to handwave away.

So our latest presidents have been more generous about sharing the decision instead of steamrolling ahead on their own. Probably a better move politically; he won’t take the full blame if the decision isn’t popular, like Vietnam.

They haven’t been “more generous”, they’ve been legally restrained by the War Powers Act, a piece of legislation passed by Congress.

They weren’t officially declared wars

You are right, they weren’t, but I don’t know the meaningful difference or point to be made when actions were still required to be authorized by Congress. As an aside, if you were in Iraq, you very likely received a GWOT service medal. GWOT standing for Global War On Terrorism. While Iraq operations were not in and of themselves individually declared a war, the use of the term GWOT by the US Government runs counter to the idea that people were “not allowed” to call it a war, when a medal awarded officially by the military uses the word.

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