Senior Seminar, Part 2 of 12

Introduction

            This is the unedited paper I wrote for my senior seminar back in 2007.  I am posting it as a sort of trip down memory lane during our current apocalypse.

            I have become a better writer since creating this.

            I have become much better informed since writing this.

            I am a very different person than when I wrote this.

Full Introduction Here

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To what ends is the President allowed to manipulate the armed forces?

The President has an unequaled level of authority within the armed forces.  There is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the President from ordering the invasion or suppression of an area.  There is nothing that limits his abilities to times of war.  There is nothing that prohibits him from assuming more powers, or abolishing various civil liberties, it fact it specifically points out areas that can be trimmed in times of insurrection or invasion.[1]  True such suspensions fall under the area of the Congress, but the President can claim that expediency was an issue and simply invoke such powers himself.

There is some historical imperative for the use of military force unilaterally on the part of the President.  Following the end of the Ottoman Empire former nation states of said empire banded together and began assaulting various trade ships in the area of the Mediterranean, they were known as the Barbary Pirates; Tripoli was the chief combatant in the conflict which included the other states of Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco.

Demanding tribute from the various navel forces of the world these third world nations, were a threat to all trade and military vessels of the Atlantic, especially those of the United States who had no way of paying the tribute that these nations demanded and lacked the protection of the British Navy that had been cast off decades earlier.

President Thomas Jefferson took action on the matter of the Pirates first as a diplomat then as a war maker.  He first attempted to align the various super powers, at the time France and England, to act along with the United States in the elimination of the Pirates, he rather promptly failed to create the theorized international alliance and unified response that would have more than likely led to a dissolution of the Pirates without conflict, the combined shear size of the alliance military would have forced a surrender by the Pirates.  After being unable to gather those forces to muster, Jefferson, without the Congress having declared war, moved American forces unilaterally against the foreign powers of the Barbary Pirates, many whose militaries routed, and primarily Tripoli, who was soundly defeated, with an accord being reached upon its end.

The powers utilized by Jefferson, the ordering of troops to eliminate foreign powers, was conceived, planned, executed, and resolved without war having ever been declared.  The entire process happened outside the realm of Congress.[2]

Use of these military powers remained sporadic following Jefferson, and more often than not the United States declared war when a perceived threat was present and seemingly able to be defeated rather than allow a military threat to American safety continue to persist (discounting the War of 1812, as a miscalculation of Napoleon left the United States in a conflict it could not win.)  This flickering use of mono-Presidential war power execution remained up until the later half of the 20^th century, when the use of actual war would very well end civilization in a matter of minutes.

Part 3

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 [1] Constitution of the United States Article 1 Section 9

[2] Bernstein covers this occurrence on pgs. 145 and 146