Is Obama about to provoke a Constitutional Crisis - with our Military? - Granite Grok

Is Obama about to provoke a Constitutional Crisis – with our Military?

Every enlistee into our Armed Services swears to this oath:

I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

Every officer swears a similar oath, but with a significant difference:

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Commerce Claws the rest of the Constitution?The Constitution defense comes first for the enlistee – and the President’s & officers orders come second for the enlisted ranks.  But carefully reread the officers’ oath – there is NO explicit requirement to obey the President’s command (although it is implicit within our civilian control of the military philosophy via Article II, Section 2, Clause I of the Constitution).

The issue –  Obama has said:

  1. Over and over again, he has dismissed the idea that he needs Congress (“If Congress does not act, I will…”)
  2. I have the authority to commit the United States to war in Syria
  3. Let the Congress and vote and decide this issue
  4. If the Congress decides “No!”, I will still order military action in Syria

Are we about to see if, like many elected officials that say the words but do not Honor Their Oaths, if our military will be the focus of Obama’s latest attack on the words and the spirit of the Constitution?  What will the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the General Officer Corp, the senior and junior officers, and the SNCOs and NCOs do when put, BY OBAMA’S ACTION ON SYRIA, on the question of “What will I do?

Here is the Constitutional basis for waging war:

U.S. Constitution – Article 1 Section 8

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

The War Power Acts:

The Vietnam-era law requires the president to seek approval from Congress after 60 days of military engagement. The law was passed in 1973 after the United States fought the Korean and Vietnam wars without actual declarations of war. But it’s always been controversial. (President Nixon actually vetoed the law, but Congress overrode him.)

And Obama himself:

“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

But what will the Military Officers do, as generally it has been their Command-in-Chief that has said “Go” and Congressional members have squawked, hemmed, and hawed, but did nothing with respect to a formal vote.  Now, they are being put on point.  If they vote “Yes” or even refuse to vote, the military will follow order.  But what happens if they do vote, and the vote is to oppose Obama as the Brit Parliament did to their Prime Minister?

True, this blog did not raise this issue when Bush took us to war in Iraq (even as I note that even Obama said that Afghanistan was the “good war” as it had served as the basis for the 9/11 attack by the stateless politico-religious system called Islam.  But this over at Instapundit caught my eye: “DONALD SENSING: Is Obama setting up a two-prong Constitutional crisis?“.  Following the link to Sense of Events where Donald Sensing is the proprietor, he has this possible future scenario (emphasis mine):

WASHINGTON, D.C.-Sept. 11, 2013. President Obama’s request for authorization to carry out air strikes against Syria failed to be approved in the Congress today.

In a short statement following the 275-260 vote to deny his request, President Obama said, “The vote will not stop the necessity of punishing the Assad regime for using chemical weapons to slaughter its own people. As I said in the Rose Garden on August 31, I I have the authority to carry out this military action without Congressional authorization. I am therefore ordering US forces to proceed with the attacks.”

Sensing makes these points (similar to mine above):

  1. He means that he thinks he has authority as president to bomb Syria without going to Congress at all.
  2. He means that even if Congress votes against authorizing the Syria war, he can still order the strikes because he didn’t have to ask Congress in the first place.

and then adds this:

I would maintain that our flag-rank military officers are duty bound to disobey those orders.

 There is no oath of loyalty or even obedience to the president. I say that for a general officer, from the chairman of the joint chief of staff on down, to commit acts of war against another country that have been actually forbidden by Congress would be one of the grossest violations of Constitutional military duty that can be imagined. That’s the second prong of a potential Constitutional crisis.

Because if Obama ignores a Congressional vote against the war and sends in the missiles with the military obeying, then we will have entered the darkest place in our history indeed: a president with literally monarchical power to use the military as he wishes and a military leadership that agrees.

I note that not a single one of the Sunday talking head shows raise this issue – certainly the Biblical mandate that one cannot serve two master (albeit it, in a different context). It was scary to watch, early in his first term, that Obama sided with the former President of the Dominican Republic that tried to overstay his term, called for his reinstatement,  and called the actions of those who merely were following the dictates of their own Constitution (to both the Letter and the Spirit of their foundational document) a coup.  We have our own history of Obama fighting against our OWN Constitution and laws in multiple areas – could we be seeing future history?

Certainly, there has been talking going on in the blogosphere along a similar thread of if the SHTF, of what would the military do, of what would the law enforcement contingent (aka, Obama’s “civilian security force”?) if events so dissembled themselves such that an order would be to act against the nation’s Citizens was given?  In this case, played out in all the media and in world view – what would the military do if provoked in this way or forced to choose: Follow a Presidential order or honor in full faith their Oath to the Constitution?

Or will they simply vote, in a military fashion, “Present”? But if the Congress votes “No” and the Military does as ordered by Obama, indeed we will be put on the point of a Constitutional Crisis of the First Order – for we will not have one and the questions I raise above have already been answered.  What has happened to our country?  What WILL happen to our country?  Would that be the bloodless coup that Progressives have pined for a century?  Or would it cause a worse condition than the Civil War – with some saying “Yes” and other splitting off and saying “No”?  Would we see brother against brother again (and in our Progressive “Enlightened” state – brothers vs sisters)?

I cannot conceive of the ramifications of this Cascading Effects of this – and almost too scared to lift that curtain.  But words have meanings, especially when the President says them.  Decisions and actions have consequences – but those that make and do them are not always the ones that suffer from the results.  In their oaths, the military swears to defend the Constitution against even domestic enemies – and we have seen that the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense have already identified groups of citizens as “potential enemies / terrorists”; what happens then to those people?  Would the most powerful and terrifying military force the world has ever known be turned inward, or turn itself inward as one faction supports the President and one supports the Congress / Constitution?

Note: I am not former military (enlisted, warrant, or commissioned) nor am I a lawyer; I’m just an ordinary schlub in central NH that tries to follow politics (and sometimes influence it).  Let me be honest, though:

I can’t believe, for the first time in my life, that I am even thinking of these two events are even remotely possible.

 

Update: BlackFive, one of the MilBlogs I read, has picked up Donald Sensing’s blogpost (and now I know that Sensing is an former mil officer).  Make sure to read the comments.

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