what kind of world would we live in if the united states of america sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas. and we choose to look the other way? it will be the world we have lived in since president reagan looked the other way when saddam hussein used chemical weapons. the red loine on chemical weapons, suggests there are civilized and uncivilized ways of death in war. war is not civilized. war is the break down of civilization. war making nations need to believe otherwise. they need to believe there are reasonable rules of war. that belief system was strengthened after the vietnam war when the united nations general assembly voted to ban the use of napalm on civilian populations. the united nations took action against napalm because of the way the united states of america used napalm. they were taking an action
country s troops where minimally in harm s way because they re in planes or safety of a ship firing missiles or actively in harm s way because they re on ground guiding the missiles, the country doesn t want anymore of that. exactly. you look at the history of the war powers act, it was enacted after vietnam. the war was very world weary, united states was war-weary and didn t want to find themselves into a quagmire as vietnam was called and this was enacted in some ways to prevent that from happening again, to give the president a bit of check and balance if he decides to get into an incursion on his own volition. as i view the constitution, there s great support from this in the supreme court cases, that congress can t take pow the heart the constitution gave to it, the congress, and give it away to the president. the constitution very clearly limits war making, deciding who to attack to the congress. war waging, deciding how to attack belongs to the president. yet president nixo
from your sources there was an internal fight for the president to come to this decision after talking with his chief of staff? the political people were concerned about it because they do have work to do on capitol hill. it s not an easy vote. there were worries about the risks. the president has always taken political risks going back to when he first ran for president. so there was some concern on the political side about this but there wasn t active opposition. no, you should not go to congress. because when you think about it, it s consistent with where barack obama has been from the get-go which is for us to return to some constitutional principles as applied to u.s. war making and even though he s not bound by this, the idea in a democracy of not just talking the talk but walking the walk, which i think in the arab world is causing puzzlement. what do you mean? why hasn t the president acted?
and other areas. i will say this, the drone program has saved lives in this country. it has saved a lot of lives in our military. it is a program that has done great damage to al-qaeda. and that is a very, very good thing. i don t think that is the controversial part of it. i think the controversial part of it is we seem to be waging war with a part of our country that is not designed to be accountable to us as civilians, and that is war-making. it is to say look, we are a democracy, a country that is bigger than any one person, regardless of who that president is, that president always has to be accountable to the people. that is the type of change that john was pushing for in that april speech. okay, so two questions come from that for me, number one is we have seen john brennan, explicitly foreign policy heads like john mccain in the
the cia and something done absolutely. different parts of the law. and more importantly, i will say this, the drone program has saved lives in this country. it has saved a lot of lives in our military. it is it s a program that has done great damage to al qaeda. and that s a very, very good thing. i don t think that is the controversial part of it. i think the controversial part of it is we seem to be waging war with part of our country that isn t designed to be accountable to us as civilians for war-making. and again, i think that s the important aspect of what the president said during the state of the union was to say, look, we are a democracy. we are a country that is bigger than any one person, regardless of who that president is. that president always has to be accountable to the people. that s the type of change that john was pushing for in that april speech. okay. so two questions come from that for me. mike morel, the acting director of the cia, foreign policy head