Congress, Schmongress: Just Quote Lincoln and Bomb Away

That’s the latest literary tripe from neocon nation, in the words of one Mathew Pinkster, the “Schwartz Fellow” at the New American Foundation.  As I have been saying here for years, American presidents don’t invoke the Constitution as their “justification” for war; they invoke the political rhetoric of Dishonest Abe.  The Constitution is a dead letter; our rulers believe that the political rhetoric of Abe Lincoln gives them  unlimited powers to do whatever they want, the pubic and the Constitution be damned.  If you dissent to this view, then you are a Hitler or worse yet, a Neo-Confederate.  They are perpetually encouraged by Lincoln cultists like Mr. Pinkster who, in his opening sentence, writes very approvingly of how:

“President Obama quoted from the Gettysburg Address when he first announced his decision to seek congressional authorization for using military force in Syria.”

But of course he did.  What else is new?  All presidents have been playing this game for generations.  The rest of Pinkster’s article is a plea for O-Bomb-Ya to be more Lincolnesque and ignore the Constitution, ignore Congress, ignore American public opinion, ignore world opinion,  and commit mass murder and mayhem in Syria.

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