By Robert Reich
The “rule of law,” as it’s often referred to, stands for laws
that emerge from a process responsive to the majority, that are consistently
applied, and are applicable to everyone regardless of their position or power.
Donald Trump doesn’t seem to understand this. Within a matter of
days, Trump has bombed Syria and a group of fighters in eastern Afghanistan.
On April 12, Trump authorized the Pentagon to drop a
22,000-pound GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) on people
described as “Islamic State forces” in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani
border.
It’s the first time this bomb – nicknamed the “mother of all
bombs,” and the largest air-dropped munition in the U.S. military’s inventory –
has ever been used in a combat.
It’s the largest explosive device America has utilized since
dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. (By
comparison, U.S. aircraft commonly drop bombs that weigh between 250 to 2,000
pounds.)
Why, exactly? It’s not clear. And what was Trump’s authority to
do this? Even less clear.
We still don’t know exactly why Trump bombed Syria. He said it
was because Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, used chemical weapons on
innocent civilians, including children.
But it wasn’t the first time Assad had used chemical weapons.
When he did in 2013, Trump counseled against bombing Syria in response.
And where did Trump get the authority to bomb Syria? Assad is a vicious dictator who does terrible things to his people. But U.S. law doesn’t authorize presidents to go to war against vicious dictators who do terrible things to their people.
The Constitution leaves it up to Congress, not the president, to
declare war.
In 2014, President Barack Obama began hostilities against the
Islamic State, arguing that Congress’s approval of George W. Bush’s wars
against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2002 provided him sufficient to
authority.
Well, maybe. But there’s no way Trump can rely on Congress’s
approval of these wars to bomb Syria.
And it’s a stretch to argue that a group claiming or alleged to
be connected to ISIS, but located in eastern Afghanistan far away from where
ISIS is attempting to establish an Islamic State, is the same as the Islamic
State.
In a democracy, the rule of law means that we the people are
supposed to be in charge, through our elected representatives in Congress.
It can be a heavy responsibility. It is especially weighty when
it comes to warfare, to the destruction and annihilation of human beings.
As Commander-in-Chief, a president is empowered to manage the
military might of the nation. But he is not empowered to initiate warfare on
his own. That’s our job.
The world according to Trump is becoming increasingly dangerous,
in part because we are not doing our job.
ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at
the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center
for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton
administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective
cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books,
including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of
Nations," and "Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent,
"Saving Capitalism." He is also a founding editor of the American
Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary,
INEQUALITY FOR ALL.
