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Questions of life or death
Ask the candidates if a president can legally
start a war, attack a country, and drop an A-bomb,
says a group that has tried to asked them such
questions.
All the major-party candidates were recently
asked 10 questions of that sort by the War and Law
League (WALL), based in San Francisco. The Q&A’s are
at http://warandlaw.org. Responses go beyond yes or
no:
For instance, ex-Senator John Edwards writes
that Bush now exceeds his lawful authority, lacking
“the power to use U.S. troops to police a civil war.”
Rep. Dennis Kucinich contends that only Congress may
start a war and it has the power to direct and end a
war. Rep. Ron Paul (the only Republican responding)
says the Constitution requires a president to get
Congress’s approval before initiating force, even if
the U.S. is attacked, a la Pearl Harbor.
The other candidates appeared unable or
unwilling to answer. But as Prof. Saul H. Mendlovitz
has told WALL, presidential candidates “have an
obligation to the citizens to give their views on
these significant questions concerning security and
the rule of law.” One of six academics endorsing the
survey, he is Dag Hammarskjold professor emeritus of
peace and world order studies at Rutgers University
law school.
“These are three crucial questions that people
must ask all serious candidates,” says Jeannette
Hassberg, WALL’s coordinator. The questions are
adapted from the latest quiz:
1. As president, would you order any war or act of war
against a country if Congress has not specifically
authorized it?
If so, under what legal authority would you act, when
gives Congress
the Constitution (Article I, Section
alone the power “to declare war”?
2. Is the preventive-war doctrine lawful — that is,
may we attack a country that has not attacked us
first?
If so, how can that doctrine be reconciled with the UN
Charter, a U.S. treaty? It says (in Article 2), “All
Members shall refrain in their international relations
from the threat or use of force against the
territorial integrity or political independence of any
state….”
3. May a president lawfully use nuclear weapons? If
you were president, would laws like the following stop
you from using them?
In the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the U.S. and
other parties pledge every effort to avert nuclear
war. And in 1996, the World Court at The Hague found
the use of nuclear weapons contrary to international
humanitarian law, primarily because they don’t
distinguish between civilian and military targets.
“Let’s put the candidates on record,” says
Paul W. Lovinger, secretary of WALL. It is a
nonpartisan group that he founded in 1998 to promote
the rule of law in U.S. foreign affairs
(warandlaw@yahoo.com).
Correction: Article 1 section 8…not emoticon
You have an interesting blog that got linked to ours with our last post called Ingredients for peace from the community pantry.
We have a more non-partisan approach to creating non-violence and negotiated settlements to conflicts and don’t usually comment on electoral politics directly.
If you’d like to read our blog it’s called practicingpeace and is also posted on wordpress.com
Mickie Lynn (one of this month’s bloggers)