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"The U.S.A. Constitution unquestionably provides that treaties are the supreme law of the land. Under the NATO Treaty there is no need for the Congress to declare war as the terms of the treaty require the U.S.A. to use force when NATO so votes." -- voice mail
A while back I had a column contending that the U.S. bombing of Serbia and Kosovo was a violation of the crystal clear language in Article I, Section 8, U.S. Constitution, "The Congress shall have power to declare war." The above quoted voice mail contends that the U.S. Constitution is irrelevant in the face of the NATO Treaty.
I sent that voice-mail contention to Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general, and asked him, "What's right?"
In his letter back to me Clark begins, "Three observations are important to your reader's argument that the North Atlantic Treaty can authorize, or obligate the U.S. to engage in war without a declaration, or approval by the U.S. Congress."
Clark's three observations follow with each observation prefaced with a headline of my own to give emphasis to the particular point made by Clark.
Writes Clark, "While a treaty, like acts of Congress made in pursuance of the Constitution, is part of the 'Supreme Law of the Land,' neither an act of Congress, nor a treaty can amend the Constitution. The Constitution in Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 empowers the Congress alone to declare war. If the United States should seek lawfully to empower any international, foreign or domestic institution to override any provision of the U.S. Constitution it could do so only by amendment provided in Article V."
(Part of Article V to which Clark refers reads, "The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to the Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States ...")
Writes Clark, "If your (voice-mail) reader was referring to Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan or the Sudan, there has been and can be no claim that any of those countries have attacked any NATO member."
What Clark surely has in mind is Article 5 of the NATO Treaty: "The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them ... shall be considered an attack against them all." No member nation of NATO was attacked in either Serbia or Kosovo, so when President Clinton sent U.S. troops to war he violated not only the U.S. Constitution but the NATO Treaty as well.
When Clinton was a college boy in England and protested the Vietnam War, he took the position that President Lyndon Johnson had not complied with a constitutional war declaration. Now Clinton has done the same thing in Serbia and Kosovo.
The silence of the members of Congress, including those from Bexar County, and the silence of the people of America, is causing international despair and anger. If we keep killing people all over the world in violation of our own Constitution, the world will turn on us like it did the Roman Empire.
Writes Clark, "The U.S., as our Supreme Court has recognized, has violated every treaty it has made with Indian tribes and many other treaties, including the Charter of the United Nations and the Statute of the International Court of Justice, which are treaties, when it was obligated by the Constitution and laws of the U.S. to honor those treaties. Selective compliance with treaties is lawless."
In the last paragraph of his letter, which includes some thoughts on the limits of warfare arising out of treaties, Clark states, "It took us several years to learn the U.S. dropped and rocketed over 28,800,000 ounces of depleted uranium in Iraq." Such is causing a high rise in cancer, including among children, medical doctors claim.
Postscript: The son of the late Tom Clark, U.S. Supreme Court justice, Ramsey comes from a highly regarded middle-of-the-road, leaning-to-conservative Dallas family.
Ramsey doesn't dislike money, but simply thinks there are things in this life more important such as kindness, common decency and the law. His wife, Georgia, also his secretary, a Corpus Christi girl, thinks the same way and walks through fire with him.
Do you have it in your heart to forgive former U.S. Marine Cpl. Ramsey Clark, with his connections, for not going back to Dallas and becoming a millionaire?