The expanding immunities of the Executive branch, now increasingly embracing the military contractors of the corporate state, is destroying the remaining pretensions that we are a nation under law. When he was inaugurated as President in January 2009, President Obama said he wanted his Administration to be known as one of "transparency and the rule of law." You'll recall during his 2008 campaign he trumpeted that he would obey the Constitution, inferring the the Republican regime was trampling the Rule of Law.
Indeed in 2007, then Senator Barack Obama stated that "the president does not have any power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." Vice President Biden was even more vehement on this issue. And Secretary of Defense Robert Gates originally opposed the attack on Libya before falling in line.
One thing you'll hear on the internet is that politics doesn't matter because you get this same result no matter who you elect. It now appears obvious that whether the electorate had selected Obama, McCain or Hillary, we'd still be in all our wars including our new one in Libya.
But, this ignores the fact that there were other names on the ballot in 2008 besides McCain and Obama. Read this piece by Ralph Nader, and ask whether or not US policy might be very different today if the electorate had chosen Ralph Nader to be President. Or, in the last election, I voted for Cynthia McKinney. She's another strong voice against these wars, and US policy would certainly be different if the electorate had elected her.
Nothing kept people from doing this. There's this loud message of course, that these candidates can't win. But, that's only true when the American people walk into a voting booth and select Obama or McCain over these other choices. Nothing stopped the American people from ending these wars in 2008 by electing someone like Ralph Nader as President.
At some point, when people have had enough, they need to stop voting for the same people who keep inflicting these policies they don't want upon them.
A very simple rule to follow to do this would be to stop voting for the candidates with all the money. When you see a candidate with enough money to flood television stations with their ads, people need to realize that this means that the candidate is already bought by the money that paid for those ads. Whether the party of the candidate is (D) or (R) is irrelevant. To get real change, try voting for the broke candidates who can't afford TV ads. At least you've got a chance that they might not already be bought.
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