I'd like to add an important thought about the difference between covert and overt positions in groups.

I believe there has to be a formal, explicit line that a group -- even one as large as the United States -- must cross openly and by announcement to enter the state known as war.

Genuine leaders understand this and while they obviously seek to avoid putting thier group on such a fitting because of its highly destructive nature, when they must abandon gentler approaches and put another group on the footing of "enemy, hostile", with group as a whole commited to that position, they make it known and declare the condition that exists. This is not just a concenience of communication, but a formal transition of states for the group. A group goes onto a genuine war footing because of real survival issues which must be faced up to if the group is to endure. When that happens a LOT of other issues by necessity get put on the back burner. But it is not done by rhetoric alone or by underhanded means.

Both the Vietnam War and to a lesser degree the Afghanistan campaign were decreed, not declared. In the former case I do not believe our Congress ever declared open war against the Government of North Vietnam. In the latter case hostilities were declared first by the loathsome underhanded assault of September, and second by the Executive branch against an enemy that had no face and no nation. It was right and decent to give notice of the state, but it was not formalized by an act of Congress as far as I know.

When leaders want war powers, for real and sufficient reason, then they have to follow the damn formal process, not out of considerations of nicety but because it is a MAJOR change of footing, and a major change of life for all citizens of that group. If you are loyal to a group which for whatever reason has found itself genuinely at war with enemies, those are your enemies at once, because that is the nature of war. That doesn't mean you have to be stupid about it, like the young studs who went around glowering (or worse) at Sikhs because they looked similar to Moslems who looked similar to terrorists. But you're obliged to support your group under such circumstances, if your loyalty to it is based on anything deeper than convenience. And that burden may NOT be thrown onto a whole population's shoulders informally or without due process, in my opinion.

For any President to undertake the actions and deployments of war without the consensus of a formal state declaration is highly risky. To prosecute a war from the executive branch only by PR and media manipulation at length, without such formal declaration of the state, is ingenuous, and deceptive even when in a worthy cause. The end does not justify means which undermine the spiritual fiber of the nation.

The press declared Vietnam a war. The press and the Executranch have declared the deployment in Afghanistan a war, and well they might under the provocation received. But where the hell is the formal declaration? And if it is not in place how can we claim charges of treason against ANYONE? Treason is not a word to be handed out lightly, because someone didn't buy in to a massive wave of group-think, absent a legal status change from media-driven panic to "War". Without such a formal transition neither Walker nor Fonda were culpable because the "state of war" was an opinion up to that point.

Given the attacks of Spetember Ibelieve a state of war did exist de facto and should have been declared. Without it, we are being left flapping by pusillanimity and political craveneass in Congress.

Maybe I am wrong about this. DID we officially declare,/i> war somewhere during the 70's, and I missed it? How about this year?

Whaddya youse think about this position?

Amos