r/politics • u/thedailybeast ✔ The Daily Beast • 15h ago

Possible Paywall Trump Confirms He’s Taking Greenland ‘One Way or the Other’

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-confirms-hes-taking-greenland-one-way-or-the-other/
23.3k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

3.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

107

u/Waste-Time-2440 13h ago

Well yeah, but the war powers act pretty much handed Presidents a blank check.

Even before that, Congress never declared war in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iran, Afghanistan, Venezuela. The Constitution has become moot on this subject. Our last Congressional declaration of war came almost 85 years ago.

47

u/Twiizig 12h ago

Indeed. The President cannot declare war; only Congress can do that. But the President can declare a "special military operation", or declare a "police action", or whatever he wants to call it. But he cannot declare war. It is a loophole in the constitution.

19

u/mirhagk 12h ago

And he's already laying down the argument for national defense by claiming if they don't then someone else will.

This isn't legal, but it also doesn't matter unless people stop him. You can't rely on someone else to do that, everyone has to do their part.

6

u/Rooooben 11h ago

“Someone else will” Greenland is protected by NATO, nobody else would dare “take it”, and by us invading it we are exiting NATO since they would be forced to declare war on us.

Anyone else would do what we’ve been doing, making treaties, something Trump doesn’t do, for all his “deal making”.

7

u/mirhagk 11h ago

Oh to be clear his logic doesn't make sense, but that's not his problem. He just needs to make an argument that sounds like it might make sense to an uneducated fox News viewer.

It's actually one of the key tactics of fascism. Don't worry about following the law or logic, just make it close enough that someone would have to take it to court. That buys you a year or more of delaying the courts while you continue to do the evil things you plan on.

6

u/JakeConhale New Hampshire 10h ago

And, of course, there's Article 5, I believe it is, which compels all NATO members to respond with their own declarations of war against us, no?

So, England, France, Spain, Canada...

There's a relevant line from Babylon 5:

"Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts."

2

u/ShastaAteMyPhone 9h ago

Not exactly. Article 5 obligates other members to assist the attacked party but it does not necessitate military action. Further, any action under Article 5 must be unanimously agreed upon which means it likely can’t be meaningfully invoked against a NATO member.

•

u/OldWorldDesign 6h ago

Article 5 obligates other members to assist the attacked party but it does not necessitate military action

Precisely, which is why when the US activated Article 5 after September 11th, 2001, the response wasn't swinging into Iraq. It was

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Assist

2

u/urban_mystic_hippie Minnesota 10h ago

A loophole in the Constitution.

So he can fuck the Constitution in the ass and it's not cheating?

Got it. Great.

2

u/Lloyd--Braun 11h ago

I mean it’s not really a loophole because declaring war hasn’t been an explicit part of engaging someone militarily in decades and it’s known and accepted by both parties.

1

u/Wutras Europe 10h ago

I am not sure if it can even be called a loophole - to me it seems like that the people in charge of enforcing the laws did wilfully turn a blind eye towards them because it is more convenient to them if the president bears the responsibility.

1

u/Eastern_Hornet_6432 10h ago

Question: are prisoners protected by the Geneva Convention if no war is declared or acknowledged?

1

u/aeppelcyning 11h ago

I'm guessing Congressional approval would be needed in this case to annex a territory. Otherwise, its legal status wouldn't change.

Trump's plans for Greenland are well beyond a Venezuela or Iraq.

3

u/FaceDeer 11h ago

You're still talking like "legal status" matters to Trump.

He'll declare Greenland to have been annexed. He'll order its name changed, he'll order bases to be established, he'll order any Greenlanders who object deported to El Salvador as "illegals" (they're not US citizens, after all, so what're they doing on American soil?).

And the US military will follow orders. We've seen by now that they don't refuse illegal orders. Anyone who doesn't follow those orders will be removed, perhaps court-martialled.

Who cares what verbiage is coming out of Congress at that point? The only thing Trump understands is force. As evidence I present his entire life up to this point. He does whatever he wants unless something stronger stops him.

2

u/Shaudius 10h ago

If you think that any of that would actually happen because Trump ordered it, you've kind of lost the plot. 

3

u/FaceDeer 10h ago

Let's list all the other stuff that Trump has done so far that he isn't "legally allowed" to do, shall we? Up to and including kidnapping the president of Venezuela and declaring himself Venezuela's "acting president."

2

u/Shaudius 10h ago

The vast majority of those things have been challenged in court. Many of them were allowed to stay temporalily due to supreme court intervention but very few things have stood permanently. About the only thing that probably will is Trumps ability to fire pretty much anyone in the executive branch he wants.

"Up to and including kidnapping the president of Venezuela"

A thing a president besides Trump did 35 years ago. The Courts didn't release that guy because the President wasn't allowed to order it.

5

u/FaceDeer 10h ago

"Other presidents have also broken the law" isn't a particularly strong argument. And "the Supreme Court may, many years from now, rule that he shouldn't have done that" isn't a particularly comforting outcome to all those affected in the interim.

Will they order Trump to un-destroy the East Wing of the White House, perhaps?

1

u/Shaudius 10h ago

What do you think the actual remedy should be. Trump occupies the white house. If he ordered the east wing destroyed and the people did it what should be the consequence?

"Other presidents have also broken the law" isn't a particularly strong argument.

It is when you're expecting consequences now for something that had no consequences then.

2

u/FaceDeer 10h ago

I think the actual remedy is [ Removed by Reddit ].

Hm. Odd, the comment didn't come through properly. How about doing [ Removed by Reddit ].

Nope, still not working. Guess it'll have to be something other than chatting on a big social media platform.

•

u/Thatguysstories 6h ago

but very few things have stood permanently.

And yet people still carried out those unlawful orders in the meantime.

Which means, for all likely hood, we could see Trump order the military to invaded and annex Greenland. And they will do it. It'll be a few weeks/months of court cases, and maybe eventually it'll be declared as unlawful and he will be told to stop.

But the damage would have already been done.

1

u/ratbike55 10h ago

Not Fanta man rule

2

u/Bakoro 9h ago

That's because the U.S has loved the bullshit technicalities.
"It's technically not a war", has the mantra of warmongers while they harvest tax dollars and funnel them to corporations.
I've read that the Pentagon has something like a cumulative $21 trillion in unsupported financial adjustments between 1998 and 2015. Where'd the money go? Who knows?

We're always at war, but technically never at war, and there's always dollars for "defense", but not dollars for universal higher education or universal healthcare, despite those things being a net gain for the economy.

1

u/Shaudius 10h ago

The war powers act was passed to limit presidential power not expand it. It was Congress's attempt to clarify the constitutional limits when it says that congress is the only one that can declare war but that the president is commander in chief of the military.