[Salon] DECLARATION OF SNORE. Congress is MIA when it comes to war (10/15/25.)

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

https://www.pogo.org/newsletters/the-bunker/introducing-the-bunker?utm_source=bunker&utm_medium=email&utm_content=logo&emci=f719a2bf-34a9-f011-8e61-6045bded8ba4&emdi=583b8b1a-b6a9-f011-8e61-6045bded8ba4&ceid=201249

This week in The Bunker: the world’s “greatest deliberative body” is little more than pusillanimity on parade when it comes to checking President Trump’s Caribbean combat; the F-35 paperweight; the Pentagon wages war on the press; and more.

DECLARATION OF SNORE

Congress is MIA when it comes to war

In serious matters of war and peace, Congress has decided, yet again, to take a pass. By a vote of 51-48, the Senate on October 8 voted down a bipartisan proposal that would have required congressional approval before the Trump administration carries out additional strikes against suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea bound for the U.S. It represents yet another lawmaker leap into irrelevance regarding one of the fundamental duties of the legislative branch of the U.S. government.

It also telegraphs something new: In the past, Congress has often passed an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (technical legal name: fig leaf, from the Latin meaning “don’t blame us”) before a president ordered military attacks. But this time around, lawmakers are so weak-kneed they’re refusing even to backdate a blank check for combat.

In recent weeks, the administration has acknowledged five such attacks. They have killed, by the administration’s own count, 27 people it labeled as Venezuelan “narco-terrorists.” The White House maintains the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with “unlawful combatants.” So it has chosen to respond by launching its own armed conflict through unlawful attacks.

Trump administration justifications for the attacks have been both meager and dubious. “Can you imagine a doctrine in which we just blow up ships off of Miami and say ‘whoops’ if they didn’t have any drugs on board?” Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said (PDF) on the Senate floor. “We allow searches. But we don’t kill every suspected boat off of Miami suspected of having drugs because 25 percent of them don’t have any drugs.”

It is illegal for the U.S. military to target civilians who — even if they may be peddling narcotics — are not engaged in “hostilities” against the United States, the Army’s former top law-of-war officer toldthe New York Times. “This is not stretching the envelope,” Geoffrey Corn added. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”

The Bunker is not in favor of drug smugglers. It just would like to see those in charge stay within the well-established boundaries of the laws of war. And that has to start with Congress, charged in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution to debate, and then to declare or notdeclare, war on enemies of the United States. At a minimum, U.S. citizens deserve to see the Congress they pay take a stand. But lily-livered lawmakers haven’t seen fit to step up to the plate and declare war against any state or organization since 1942. Their abdication comes despite dozens of combat deployments since then, some of which — Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq 2.0 — surely warranted such a debate.

Each week seems to bring an ever-tighter ratcheting of autocracy to the U.S. government. First it was over ballots. Now it is over bullets.

Aimed at them.

For now.