Reports from the UK are talking about a British General lambasting US policy failures in Iraq. From the Guardian:
The bitter transatlantic row over Iraq intensified as another key British general lambasted the US for bungling the aftermath of the invasion.
Major General Tim Cross, the most senior UK officer involved in the post-war planning, said Washington’s policy had been “fatally flawed”. He also insisted he had raised serious concerns about the possibility of the country sliding into chaos with Donald Rumsfeld – but the then-US defence secretary “dismissed” the warnings.
Once again, the personalities and the media are concerned with the symptoms of our problems in Iraq – rather than the cause.
Although it seems that the Bush administration has made plenty of mistakes in the handling of Iraq – there are always going to be people who support those decisions. Thus, the debate in the media is generally focused on two sides – proper vs improper handling of the war – but neither actually oppose the war itself….just its handling.
The failures of managing an aggressive war are just the symptom of an inherently flawed foreign policy of aggression, force and war.
The US Constitution was written under “positive grant.” This means that the federal government is authorized to exercise those powers which are specifically given to it in the Constitution. This was so important to the founders that they codified it in law as the Tenth Amendment.
The war in Iraq was was unconstitutional from the start because it lacked a declaration of war from Congress – as mandated by the Constitution. This has been covered at length in a number of previous posts on this site.
No matter what the politicians or the pundits may tell you, there is nothing, whatsoever, in the Constitution, which authorized the Congress to delegate its war-declaring powers to the Executive Branch.
Undeclared wars are the norm in Washington, and they have been a cancer that’s infected U.S. foreign policy for decades. Mismanagement of these undeclared wars is just an obvious and expected symptom. These symptoms will never go away until the cancer is removed.