Tag: us presidents

The American Presidency and Perpetual War

One of the defining failures of modern American government has been the steady erosion of Congress’s constitutional authority over war. The Constitution grants Congress — not the president — the power to declare war. Congress decides to go to war. The president wages it.

Over the past several decades, presidents of both major parties have increasingly treated military intervention as an executive prerogative rather than a congressional requirement.

The last six presidents have not reflected distinct foreign policy doctrines but a uniparty continuum of executive overreach. While the particulars differ, each administration has initiated or significantly expanded military action without a formal declaration of war or without clear evidence that the targeted country posed an imminent threat to the United States.

President George H.W. Bush assembled an international coalition following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Congress ultimately authorized the use of military force. However, it was not a defensive war; it fostered the growing post-Cold War assumption that the United States should act as the world’s policeman.

President Bill Clinton likewise employed military force without declarations of war. The 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serbia during the Kosovo conflict proceeded despite Congress failing to authorize it in a clear and lasting manner. The administration argued humanitarian intervention justified military action. But even compelling humanitarian concerns do not erase the Constitution’s allocation of war powers.

President George W. Bush fundamentally reshaped American foreign policy after the Sept. 11 attacks. The invasion of Afghanistan initially enjoyed broad support and congressional authorization in response to al-Qaeda’s attacks. However, the 2003 invasion of Iraq remains one of the most controversial and catastrophic military actions in modern American history.

Congress did authorize force, but the constitutional process was undermined by intelligence failures and exaggerated claims about weapons of mass destruction and links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda that ultimately proved unfounded. We now know that Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States warranting a preventive war. The conflict resulted in enormous human suffering, significant financial costs, regional instability and expanded executive authority that future presidents would inherit.

President Barack Obama accelerated executive war-making despite his early criticism of the Iraq War. His 2011 intervention in Libya stands as perhaps the clearest example. The United States joined NATO air operations that helped overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, yet Congress never authorized the intervention. The administration argued that the operation did not constitute “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution because American forces faced limited risk and most of the killing was done by U.S. intelligence assets.

President Joe Biden continued this pattern through military operations in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, strikes against Iranian-backed militias — and by funding Ukraine’s war against Russia. The administration justified these actions primarily as force protection, counterterrorism, responses to attacks on U.S. personnel, or defense of democracy and sovereignty. None of these rationales substitutes for congressional authorization.

Moreover, Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. are members of the United Nations. Like the U.N. or not, the U.N. Charter is a treaty written by U.S. officials and ratified by the Senate. Under the Constitution, treaties are the supreme law of the land along with the Constitution itself. The U.N. Charter prohibits all war except for immediate defensive purposes or when authorized by the U.N. Security Council; neither of which is the case with Ukraine.

President Donald Trump famously campaigned against “endless wars,” yet his administration launched missile strikes against Syria in 2017 and 2018 without congressional approval, assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in January 2020, commenced the current unlawful and meaningless war against Iran, now in its third stage of combat, and he has financed Israeli expansion — all without congressional authorization.

He has famously indicated that he rejects the constitutional role of treaties and the international laws written pursuant to them. He has even threatened to annihilate the Iranian/Persian civilization.

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Can We Ever Trust the Government To Be Honest About War?

For decades, the U.S. government has been willing to start wars but not strategically and transparently manage them, consistently misleading its citizenry to justify adventurism abroad. The conduct of the Trump administration in the current war with Iran is no exception. 

President Donald Trump’s claims of “victory” as the war persists through a blockade and multiple troop surges without a clear win-case highlights how optics designed to mislead dictate Washington’s approach to war today. This war could mark a crucial lesson and potential turning point, however, forcing the nation to come to grips with the real costs of violent conflict.

Narrative Wars at the Expense of Transparency

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks in New York City produced an initial outpouring of support. While commenters often blame President George W. Bush and his administration for ill-conceived “adventurism,” a lack of honesty with the American people regarding that adventurism played an equally damaging role. Just as officials lied about a range of issues—including Baghdad’s possession of weapons of mass destruction—to justify their invasion of Iraq, the Trump administration has adopted similar thinking.

Consider Trump’s claims to have already achieved “regime change” in Iran; his constant declarations that the United States has achieved “victory” in the war; Hegseth’s ongoing press restrictions at the Pentagon to avoid hard questions; the administration’s refusal to hold public oversight hearings with the U.S. Congress; and the Department of Defense’s reported slow rolling of U.S. casualty numbers. Each of these claims has proven to be an exaggeration or an outright lie.

Consider the U.S. operation to rescue two airmen shot down deep within Iranian territory in early April. Before the mission, Trump and his team had built a narrative of total air dominance over Iran, meant to assuage the public’s deep skepticism of the war and substantial concern for the safety of U.S. military members across the Middle East.

Then Iran shot down an F-15E Strike Eagle, stranding two of its crew. For days, the world waited, fearing an incident reminiscent of the 1979 hostage crisis and the certain escalation that would follow. Ultimately, the United States rescued the airmen, but at the expense of additional aircraft and a public relations disaster. 

The Trump administration needed to shift the narrative. On April 6, Trump, Hegseth, and other senior U.S. officials held a press conference to tout the success of the rescue. They bragged about the infallibility of the U.S. military and the righteousness of American resolve. They did not explain just how an advanced U.S. aircraft was shot down over supposedly dominated Iranian skies by a supposedly destroyed Iranian military, nor how additional aircraft worth hundreds of millions of dollars met a similar fate during the rescue.

Instead of leveling with Americans, the White House leaned further into their would-be success. In the same press conference, Trump threatened to jail a journalist who leaked information about the incident in the first place, claiming an unspecified “leaker” had put U.S. national security at risk by sharing information about a second pilot who was still lost in Iran. “We’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘National security, give it up or go to jail,'” he proclaimed.

In another instance earlier in the war, Iran killed six U.S. service members in Kuwait who were operating a mobile command center with little to no real protection from missile and drone strikes. It took days for the government to confirm the deaths and weeks to obtain the details surrounding the incident. While the Trump administration repeatedly stressed that all American service members and citizens were safe, the reality was already known: Far too many U.S. installations across the Middle East have long been exposed to such attacks, serving as easy targets for Iran in any such conflict. Soldiers who survived the strike refuted the official explanation from Washington. 

The primary concern of the U.S. public is the well-being of Americans abroad. Fears over the safety of American troops and civilians damaged domestic support for previous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. To avoid reporting on such casualties while simultaneously rejecting congressional oversight over a war that it did not authorize is to recognize the war’s limited legitimacy. 

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The Left’s Rhetoric of Violence Against Republican Presidents

With now the third serious assassination attempt against President Trump on the books, it is an important juncture to examine the intellectual gleischaltung that encourages American society and global society to view Republican Presidents as the height of all evil. More than Kim Jong Un of North Korea, more than Vladimir Putin of Russia, more than Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, more than Chairman Xi of China, Republican Presidents are rhetorically imbued with intrinsic evil that requires all available means of persuasion — including assassination. Since the assassination of Lincoln, the press and academic culture have worked together to create a sense of moral purpose in killing Republican presidents. On July 11, 2007, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Betty Williams gave the keynote speech to the International Women’s Peace Conference in Dallas, Texas, and said (to laughter and applause from the audience):“I mean right now, I could kill George Bush, no problem. No, I don’t mean that. I mean — how could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that.” As a Republican President, George W. Bush was subjected to a media and academic character assassination regimen that drove his approval into the 20s before he left office in 2009. A Methodist minister, Charles Moore hated President Bush so much that he immolated himself at Grand Saline, Texas in 2014. He expressed written regret that he lacked the courage to burn himself alive on the campus of SMU where George W. Bush’s Presidential library is located. In an academic study I conducted on journalistic usage of the word “kill” and its derivates within the same sentence of Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump, I found this data:

Bush in 2001: 1,280

Obama in 2009: 2,608

Trump in 2017: 7,890

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Two Different Wars, Two Different Presidents, But the Same Lies

I’m writing this piece well into President Donald Trump’s new war with Iran, which, with the help of Israel, has already killed more than 2,000 civilians, including 175 schoolgirls and staff; displaced some 3.2 million people; and is costing the American taxpayer at least one billion dollars a day. All of which is tragically reminiscent of the last time a Republican president led the U.S. into a war on a river of lies and greed. I’m thinking, of course, about George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Weapons that don’t exist. Threats to this country that aren’t real. Liberation for a people that the U.S. will never win over. Freedom for women about whom nobody in power cares a jot. A war that will bring total victory in only a few days or weeks. All this we heard in 2003, and all this we are hearing again now.

I spent many years writing about the Iraq War, even though it took me some time to figure out how to begin. I was sickened by the Muslim-baiting that had been going on since the 2001 attacks on New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and disgusted with the Hollywood movies and legacy press articles glorifying our vengeful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while deifying our soldiers. I wanted to tell a different story. I just didn’t know how.

Then, in 2004, I came across the blog Baghdad Burning by a 24-year-old Iraqi woman who called herself Riverbend. She was the first Iraqi I had ever read on the war, and she taught me that those in an occupied country tell a very different story than do the occupiers.

Back then, if Iraqi men showed up in American books, movies, or journalism at all, it was usually as an enemy or a clown. Meanwhile, Iraqi women were depicted as little more than incomprehensible black-clad figures hovering in the background or wailing over the dead. But Riverbend was none of those. She was a computer technician in a sophisticated city who sounded like an American college student. I was hooked.

Over the next few months, I read her blog religiously. Riverbend’s language and thoughts sounded no different than those of my own daughter, except that she was describing what it was like to live, hour-by-hour, through the overwhelming, heart-freezing violence of a U.S. bombing campaign and the occupation of her country.

Today, we can get the same sense of immediacy by reading or listening to brave civilians and journalists in Gaza, but during our post-9/11 wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, hearing any voice from the “other side” was rare. So, Riverbend’s blog was not only eye-opening, but it made readers like me feel as though we were experiencing the war right beside her. She wove the mundane moments of her days — jokes, lighthearted observations, conversations with her family — in with her terror at the falling bombs and her feelings about the United States as she watched us tear apart her country. Her blog was eventually collected into a book and published by The Feminist Press in 2005.

Soon, I began reading other Iraqi blogs, too, along with every translation I could find of Iraqi poetry and fiction. I also followed videos by Iraqis that were appearing online, telling stories remarkably different from those I was hearing here in the United States. Some of those Iraqi civilians did indeed want democracy, although they didn’t believe it could be forced on anyone by a foreign power or bombs. Some had been satisfied living under Saddam Hussein’s autocratic rule. Many were too focused on their daily struggles to find food and avoid bombs to think about politics at all. But all of them, whatever their thoughts and opinions, were suffering horribly, not only from our bombs, but from wounds, illnesses, malnutrition, starvation, and threats of all kinds, as well as from bullying, kidnappings, rape, and murder at the hands of the gangs and militias our war had unleashed.

One of the most eye-opening of those Iraqi videos was made by an anonymous woman early in the war, who put on a burqa, hid her handheld camera under it, and drove around the countryside interviewing women about their struggles and poverty. As she explained, what she was doing was so dangerous that she had no doubt her video would only remain up on YouTube for a day or so. Sure enough, it quickly disappeared. I only hope that she didn’t disappear with it.

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SHOCKING: Even Mt Vernon Staff Unfamiliar With Genocidal Nazi Duke’s History & Tour Of America In Spring 1940; He’s Listed As A “Famous” Visitor On Their Website!

At Armed Forces Press, we just ran a feature last month aiming to raise awareness about the historically buried and shocking British royal / Nazi duke trip across the US in Spring 1940, with hundreds of American elites visiting him at events, while the US was still neutral in WWII. That article links to a documentation webpage with seized and declassified US and Nazi German intelligence. Awfully, it was put forth that after WWII, it was not only that the Duke of Saxe Coburg and Gotha was a big Nazi, but he was also associated with the policy to exterminate the mentally ill and physically disabled.

Shockingly, over the weekend in a web search, I stumbled upon that Mt. Vernon, the treasured home of George Washington in Virginia south of DC, listed this genocidal duke among their selected “famous” visitors, with no further text.

A number of people around me also found this deeply disturbing.

I sent these two emails to a number of their senior staff members including their historian CEO, SVP of fundraising (development), library director, chief curator, VP of education, and VP of media / comm, to make sure this would receive administrative attention.

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Trump Lied About Being for Peace – Just Like Every President Before Him

Three years ago, Donald Trump referred to himself as “the candidate who delivers peace.” This weekend, his administration bombed Iran. While it may seem unusual, the historical record suggests otherwise, clearly demonstrating that Trump follows a long line of American politicians who spent a lot of time talking about being against wars only to wage them once elected president.

During the 2000 presidential debates, George W. Bush claimed he wanted a “humble” foreign policy, adding that he doesn’t think US troops “ought to be used for what’s called nation-building.”

By 2003, the Bush administration was at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to researchers at Brown University, the Iraq War directly caused at least 190,000 deaths and is projected to cost US taxpayers roughly $2.2 trillion when long-term veteran care and related expenses are included.

Bush also oversaw a brutal torture program that included waterboarding, sensory deprivation, auditory overload, and “rectal rehydration”.

In February 2007, Barack Obama told an Illinois crowd that they came to see him speak “because you believe in what this country can be. In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope.” In 2008, he said that events in Iraq “have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.”

Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Three days after his inauguration, Obama ordered the CIA’s first Pakistani drone strike, killing at least nine civilians. During his first term, Obama outpaced Bush in the number of drone strikes he authorized, blew up weddings and funerals, bombed Libya, launched cyber attacks and imposed crushing economic sanctions against Iran, while also openly targeting US citizens in Yemen.

In 2013, Obama boasted that “after a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming home.” And yet, by the time he left office in January 2017, US troops remained in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Bush-era CIA torture was brushed under the carpet, and the US had bombed at least seven different countries.

In 2016, Donald Trump claimed if he became president, “the era of nation-building will be brought to a very swift and decisive end.”

Less than a week into his first term, Trump oversaw a commando raid in Yemen that resulted in the death of an 8-year-old girl.

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Megyn Kelly shares ‘creepy’ photo of Bill Clinton as Hillary deposed over Epstein

Megyn Kelly revealed a ‘creepy’ decades-old photo of Bill Clinton ‘looking down the chest’ of her young friends as Hillary began her deposition over alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein. 

Kelly dropped the photo during an interview with Tucker Carlson, while the ex-First Lady took questions from members of Congress at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center, near the Clintons’ home in Westchester County, New York. 

The former Fox News anchor claimed the photo showed two of her friends, Meg Florence and Abby Rittman, at The Bombay Club in Washington in 1999, when Bill Clinton was still president and shortly after his impeachment.

‘Yes, he is looking down the chest of my friend, Meg Florence, and that’s my other friend in the foreground, Abby Rittman. He’s basically got his hand on her side boob,’ Kelly said.

The SiriusXM host added that the president was there with Hillary and daughter Chelsea.

Clinton ‘went over to their table, they were there with a bunch of guys too, introduced himself before you know it, he wanted pictures.’

Kelly said that both of her friends were around 20 years old and ‘were just graduating college.’

She called it ‘evidence’ that Clinton ‘wasn’t shamed at all’ over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which ended with the Senate failing to convict him in February of 1999.

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Report: CCP Official Tied to 26 Babies in CA Surrogacy Scam Wanted One of His Offspring to Eventually Become U.S. President

A senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official who was allegedly involved in a massive surrogacy scam in California had an obsession with one of his children eventually becoming president of the United States, according to a new report.

Guojun Xuan and his partner Silvia Zhang allegedly took advantage of California’s wild west surrogacy industry to have at least 26 children via surrogates using Xuan’s sperm and an anonymous egg donor, The New Yorker detailed. The pair amassed more than two dozen children by creating their own agency, called Mark Surrogacy, which was located at their multimillion dollar home in Arcadia (seen above.)

Employees who worked at the couple’s home said Xuan was a “rich man who wants a lot of kids” by any means necessary, according to the New Yorker. 

Other employees claimed Xuan was obsessed with having as many children as possible in the hopes that one would eventually become president of the United States, per the report. 

“Several of the children were named after prominent US politicians and foreign leaders — which Song suggested was out of jealousy, since Xuan isn’t a ‘natural-born’ American and cannot run for president,” the New York Post detailed. Song had been an aide to the couple.

Xuan and Zhang allegedly posed as an unmarried couple who wanted to give their daughter a sibling — a claim which attracted dozens of women who agreed to be surrogates for the couple. None of the women were aware of the other surrogates when they entered into agreements, according to the report.

Xuan’s alleged surrogacy scam was revealed after a two-month-old infant under his care was hospitalized with head injuries in May 2025. Officials discovered the more than two dozen other children in his care, ranging from infants to teenagers. The couple is out on bond while a state child abuse investigation is ongoing, according to the report. 

Since the pair was arrested, at least five more of their surrogates have given birth, according to reports cited by The Post. Some surrogate mothers are fighting for custody of the children after discovering the alleged scheme. Xuan and Zhang have filed lawsuits against at least two expecting surrogates who have allegedly cut off contact with the couple since their arrest, per the report.

The New Yorker piece alleges that Xuan’s behavior had become more chaotic in recent months, including actions such as carrying around business cards claiming to be a “Trump Doge Member,” “an Official Trump Cabinet Member,” and a “Trump Advisor,” although he appears to have no ties to the Trump administration.

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The Art of the Presidential Health Cover-Up

When the St. Petersburg Times first launched PolitiFact in 2007, its purpose was to assess the veracity of statements made by “members of Congress, the president, cabinet secretaries, lobbyists, people who testify before Congress and anyone else who speaks up in Washington.”

Fast forward to September 2025, and the trailblazing fact-checker has been reduced to informing us that “President Donald Trump is alive.” Yes, and the sky is blue, and the day ends in y, even if some online randos may be memeing to the contrary.

The trivial episode of Trump’s rumored demise illuminates what the future intersection of politics and information might look like. POTUSes and their handlers will go to fantastical lengths to lie about presidential health crises, history demonstrates; what changes over time is how they get away with it.

Grover Cleveland, for example, traded on his considerable reputation as “The Honest President” to not only deny the factual newspaper report that what had been billed as a four-day yachting vacation in 1893 was actually major oral surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on the roof of his mouth, but also to successfully disparage the reporter as a fabulist disgrace to journalism.

Edith Wilson, the Jill Biden of a century ago, cut off nearly all access to her husband Woodrow after his October 1919 stroke while he was president, making his final 17 months in office an unelected co-presidency at best. She and his complicit medical team (who took care to avoid the word stroke, preferring exhaustion) successfully pulled off a single, risky, stage-managed afternoon
meeting with two suspicious senators, during which Woodrow Wilson’s paralyzed side was covered by a blanket. The president was able to rally enough to mollify (if on a secondhand basis) the 100 or so reporters waiting downstairs.

Edith Wilson also helped arrange a glowing, Pulitzer Prize–winning New York World profile by Louis Seibold in June 1920, showing her husband to be a hale, active, and sharp-witted operator. It was, alas, a work of fiction.

How was Franklin Delano Roosevelt able to conceal his debilitating congestive heart failure, diagnosed in March 1944—an election year that he (unlike Wilson in 1920) was still competing in? For one, he and his team had had 23 years’ worth of experience working with a mostly compliant and occasionally intimidated press to conceal and suppress visual evidence of his polio paralysis. For another, it was a war year, back long before our modern yearslong presidential election marathons. The actual campaign didn’t really begin until late September, and the president did manage to propel himself through a few vigorous days on the hustings.

It also helped that FDR’s personal physician, Vice Admiral Ross T. McIntire, was an extravagant liar. In January 1944 he insisted his boss “was in better health than at any time since he entered the White House,” and then in the fall that “the president’s health is perfectly OK. There are absolutely no organic difficulties at all.”

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