United States faces a constitutional crisis

The U.S. Supreme Court, intentionally or not, joined forces with The New York Times and the far left of the U.S. Congress in bringing into question President George W. Bush’s authority to conduct the war on world terrorism.
The U.S. Supreme Court has effectively given al-Qaida prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere protection from being tried by military tribunals.
This leaves only the U.S. court system open, as was the recent case of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, who was given life without possibility of parole.
The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, in a joint statement published under the bylines of both editors, concluded, “to publish or not to publish (a national security secret) ... is the responsibility of the editors ... It is not a responsibility we take lightly. And it is not one we can surrender to the government.”
Effectively, The New York Times, not the U.S. government, will make the decisions with respect to secret classifications in the future.
The far left in Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., along with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., are again questioning President Bush’s previously challenged programs of eavesdropping on suspected terrorist phone calls and financial transactions of suspected terrorists.
Sen. Schumer, on July 2, accused the White House of acting as if Bush’s power is “infinite and unchecked by anybody.”
Sen. Schumer then sent a letter to Attorney General Gonzales seeking a review of “all their other arrogations of power.”
This three-pronged attack against President Bush’s authority to effectively conduct the war against world terrorism is giving major aid and comfort to the enemy, thus endangering American lives at home and soldiers’ lives on the battlefronts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on an ABC Sunday program warned Republicans they would “rue the day if they politicized this.”
What Senator Feinstein is missing in her admonition is the fact that the hate Bush crowd has already “politicized” the conduct of the President’s efforts to wage war against terrorism.
A constitutional crisis in time of war is intolerable.
Basically, it interferes with our military forces in combat and compromises the nation’s defenses. Worse yet, we are at a point where the nation could slip back into the violence of the 1960s.
A Declaration of War will set the nation straight again.
It will bring order to the conduct of the war. The President’s war powers will not be so readily challenged.
War should have been declared immediately after 9/11. Political difference had reached its lowest ebb in many years. The nation was in a mood for action.
That moment has passed. Few recall 9/11 with any passion, at all, with the exception of those who lost loved ones.
America is in World War III. Its armies are spread around the globe, actively engaged, and holding positions in areas facing potential conflict, as in Korea.
The United States has actually been at war with terrorism since 1979 when Iranian terrorists seized the American Embassy in Tehran.
Successive attacks by car and truck bombers at the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 killed a total of 304.
The 1985 bombing of the U.S. air base in Germany killed 22; the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro that year left another person dead. The 1986 hijacking of TWA 840 and the bomb destruction of Pan Am 109 over Scotland in 1988 left 263 dead.
The first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 left six dead. The 1995-96 car and truck bombings in Saudi Arabia killed 26. The 2000 bombing of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 241.
The U.S.S. Cole incident in 2000 in Yemen killed 19 sailors. All these terrorist acts went unchallenged. Before 9/11, terrorism had taken 1,863 American lives.
And finally on Sept. 11, 2001, foreign nationals invaded the United States, hijacked four American jet airliners, with passengers aboard, destroyed the twin Trade Towers in New York City, severely damaged the north face of the Pentagon Building in Arlington, Va., and downed United Flight 93 in a field in Pennsylvania at a cost of more than 3,000 lives altogether, plus thousands of injured.
More Americans died before and during 9/11 than all the war fatalities during combat over the past three years in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
We were at war before 9/11 and we most certainly are at war now.
The Republican majority in both Houses of Congress must develop enough spine to introduce resolutions for a Declaration of War for the United States of America against all forces of terrorism wherever they exist in the world.
This will set the record straight as to who wants to fight a real war and those who aren’t interested.
Let the dissidents in Congress vote against the majority of Americans who support the war in Iraq and Afghanistan; vote against the substantial majority who support President Bush’s use of eavesdropping techniques with NSA and the Swift international banking’s exposure of terrorist financial transactions; and, just as important, vote against the vast majority who bitterly resent The New York Times’ treasonous disclosure of national security secrets.
The November 2006 elections will determine the rest.
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Mr. Hostetter welcomes comments at admin@americanfarm.com.