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Balance of Powers: How Ron Paul might be able to bring it back

Schaumburg, IL
By A.B. Dada
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I was reading the Andrew Sullivan’s summary of an article in the NY Times regarding the renewed torture effort by the U.S., and it is obvious that both the mainstream press, and the blogging media, forget one issue that is bigger than the debate as to what defines a war criminal: the obvious destruction of the Separation and Balance of Powers that the U.S. Constitution outlines. When a Federal employee who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution violates that oath, we have a far bigger crime than a war crime.

The idea of using torture is one that is despicable to me, because history has shown that people will admit to anything under torture, even if they have no knowledge of what they’re admitting to. We’ve seen videos of journalists undergoing controlled torture, who have caved in minutes or less to admitting to crimes they didn’t commit. We’ve seen decades of “criminals” on death row who admitted to a crime, only to be cleared of the crime after DNA and other evidence surfaced, and those very “criminals” speaking of the torture they were interrogated under.

Yet is torture a war crime if we haven’t had a Declaration of War? If you go to your neighbor’s property and kill them, that is murder. If you go to your neighbor’s property and pummel them, that is initiating unprovoked force against another in an offensive fashion. Both of these are property crimes, which are supposedly government’s job to protect against and judge against. I don’t agree that we need government to handle property crimes, but if we are to understand why we need government, we need to understand what their purpose is: to handle property disputes and to handle property crimes.

A Declaration of War is an act of Congress, and only Congress. The Declaration of War is important because it puts every Congressional Representative on the line as responsible for pushing for a war. Without a Declaration of War by Congress, there is no accountability in the actions of the military, from the top down. The Executive Branch takes the Bills passed by Congress (and the Senate) and executes them, within the confines of the Constitution, a document that limits what the Federal government can do. Without a Declaration of War, the Executive branch can not act aggressively.

Without that act of Congress, actions taken against foreigners are criminal actions. Murdering a foreign soldier on foreign land is murder, yet a Declaration of War can limit that to being an act of self-defense during war if the act is against a soldier that is attacking the one defending themselves. We don’t have a Declaration of War by Congress, and haven’t had one since World War II. Why? Because Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Judicial Branch have all violated their oaths to uphold the Constitution. What we have now is an unconstitutional action that should be investigated immediately — but it won’t, because the Balance of Powers and the Separation of Powers are gone. Instead of having 3 branches of Federal government fighting against one another in trying to keep Federal government small, we have 3 branches of Federal government all colluding together to produce a more powerful State, which makes each employee more powerful as well. This is not the intention of the Constitution, a document that is an easy read even for an 8th grader.

Dr. Paul’s view on returning to a Constitutional Republic show strength on many levels, but I believe his best view is returning the strong Separation of Powers back to the Federal branches. We don’t need to see Democrats versus Republicans versus Independents battling in Congress, we need to see the Supreme Court and the President battling all of Congress, and vice versa. Separating the powers of each branch will go a long way to keeping Federal government small, since each branch has an oath to uphold.

Personally, I don’t know who is a war criminal, and what the penalty should be if they were convicted of being a war criminal. I do know that most every top official of every branch of government is violating the oath to uphold the Constitution as their primary job. That means sticking to the intent of having a small, unobtrusive and particularly weak Federal government that leaves MOST laws and regulations to the States, or preferably to the People if they can handle the responsibility.

It’s important to understand that if anyone is indicted as a war criminal, we must look beyond just the Executive branch. All 3 branches colluded together to destroy the Separation of Powers, and all 3 branches should be investigated, indicted, and tried based on the succinct and specific powers they extended beyond as laid out in the Constitution.