Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The Senate's Syria Resolution Has a Huge Secret Giveaway to the President

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, September 8, 2013

The Senate's Syria Resolution Has a Huge Secret Giveaway to the President

Click here to access article by Garrett Epps from The Atlantic.

The Obama administration has claimed that Obama has the authority to attack Syria based on the 1973 War Powers Act even without Congressional approval. This is clearly false. However, this article specifically focuses on the evolution of this false interpretation of war making powers of the president from the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that congress passed after the 9/11 event. The latest attempt to strengthen the powers of the executive branch is revealed by Epps in the resolution just passed by the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. This is another lie compounding all the other lies in relation to Syria that a faction of the shadow government is using to justify the Obama administration's commitment to attack Syria.

Though Congress plays at narrowing Obama's authority, the draft authorization could actually give him and future presidents sweeping new powers to intervene overseas.

For another take on this evolution toward dictatorship, read Mickey Z's article which compares the Empire's management of a crisis (for Empire directors the crisis was a democratically elected socialist government!) located in Chile in 1973 with that of present day Syria.