Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan is not surprisingly totally opposed to President Obama unilaterally striking Syria without approval from Congress.
Speaking to NewsMax TV’s Kathleen Walter Thursday, Buchanan said, “If the president launched an unnecessary and unconstitutional war, striking a country against whom we have not declared war and had not attacked us, that is de facto an impeachable act.”
PAT BUCHANAN: The president of the United States is threatening a war and planning a war he has no right to wage. The Congress of the United States alone has the power to authorize war or declare war and it has not done so.
President Obama is usurping the authority of the Congress first and foremost, and he appears about to engage in and to launch an unconstitutional and unnecessary war. So I think that the President of the United States should be called to account by the Congress of the United States and told no war without our approval. That's the way the Constitution works. […]
The key figure is Speaker of the House John Boehner, who should call the House of Representatives back into session on Monday and instruct the president directly: "Mr. President, you have no authority and no right to launch acts of war against the country Syria against whom we have not declared or authorized any war, and we are calling on you not to engage in what would clearly be an impeachable act — starting a war against a country without the approval of the Congress of the United States when you were asked directly not to do so." [...]
There's no constitutional justification right now in my judgment for a strike on Syria. They haven’t attacked us, they haven’t threatened to attack us, the U.N. Security Council has not authorized a war, the Congress of the United States has not authorized a war.
I do agree that the use of poison gas by the Syrian government — if it was President Assad who authorized it — is an obscene act which the international community and the United Nations Security Council should take up. But the use of poison gas, or chlorine, or sarin, whatever was used, we don’t know what was used. We don't know who ordered it; we don't know how it was delivered; we don't know if President Assad knew about it; we don't know if President Assad ordered it.
But if he did, this is an issue that ought to be taken up by the international community and the U.N. Security Council, not the United States of America unilaterally, and certainly not the president of the United States based on the flimsy evidence we have seen to date. […]
It is a clear, unconstitutional, illegal act. If the president did this, he would be a rogue president.
