Senior Seminar, Part 3 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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How World War II Changed War Accountability

War was fought during World War II often as an exercise in the infliction of misery on a mass scale.  The targeting of civilian structures was common, as it had always been.  But the idea that the entire world could be systematically bombed and poisoned beyond all future use was beyond comprehension, no weapon of war was capable of inflicting such suffering, so while war was the most detestable of sciences it remained human in a way, it had scale and a limited reach that required manpower and natural resources to power.  The advent of the atomic weapon changed those previously held conceptions of war.  The magnitude and death capable of quick execution was the most inexpensive and catastrophically quick it had ever been.  A single war could end the entire world.

This led to a constitutional problem, since war could be carried out in a matter of minutes following its declaration by a side, the idea of waiting for Congress to declare war in response to the conflict was not logistically possible.  Congress was and currently is perceived as a lumbering clunking political hulk that cannot reach decisive conclusions, and is often so fragmented that to even gather a number of members together to reach a consensus is a labor of considerable effort.  The President, as the core, and only key component of his entire branch of the government, lacks the handicap of a fractured and inherently indecisive gaggle of political minds.

Since the President is the only person kept perpetually in the know of all military actions the United States monitors he is the only elected individual that could make a decision in the constraints of time that had been created by the advent of atomic weapons.  The President was the only person who could authorize the use of nuclear weapons in a short enough period of time to be considered an adequately responsive time to an attack.  The President became the only elected official that could respond to a modern war.  It was totally within his preview.  And thus, the President became the single being able to decide that war existed, and how to respond to it.  The ability, or need, to declare war, ceased to exist.

To what degree must the President be monitored to prevent abuses of this role?

The level to which the President is monitored is almost not an issue.  Short of the President using the armed forces to commit high crimes against the American public or to manipulate the other branches of the government there is no way to lay siege to the President’s authority.  The President can only be brought up on treason charges for bribery, treason, and high crimes.[1]  Since it is not a crime, but is in fact the President’s chief function to order the military to act in the interests of the United States, you cannot impeach him for instigating military conflict outside time of war.

In all actuality, if the President utilized the military to commit an act of treason, using military force to assume all of the powers of the Government and simply dissolving the other branches then no recourse would exist at all.  It could be for any number of reasons, but it very well may be the simple idea that no President till this point has wanted to risk the military simply not obeying his orders.  There is nothing really preventing the President’s ascendancy should the military as a whole follow such orders, though this does assume the military would follow such orders, and that in turn is a tenuous line of reasoning.

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[1] Constitution: Article II, Section 4