dsandler.org/wp

Daniel Ellsberg, interviewed
on Salon, interviewed on KQED’s Forum (no
direct show link — they seem to be behind on the website), all
about his new book,
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.
Perhaps the most potent message of his Forum interview (to which I listened
last night in rerun) was his condemnation for the inclination of
post-World-War-II Congresses to shirk their responsibility over the making of
war, choosing instead to award that power back to the President. It was King
George’s power, and proclivity, to make war at his whim that most influenced
the Framers’ decision to remove that power entirely from the
Presidency. Ellsberg, from the Salon interview:

I think the answer is what the founders amazingly wisely provided for in our
Constitution, which is to prevent any one man from making the decision on war
and peace on his own. They left the decision exclusively in the Constitution
in the hands of a broad representative body, the Congress. And secondly, you
can’t let the decision of how much to tell the public about matters of war
and peace be exclusively in the hands of that one man. Because that gives him
the war power that makes him a king. A king in foreign policy is close to
what we’ve had in the past 50 years. And it’s what we have now. And we should
get away from it. We should go back to the idea of checks and balances, and
the war power residing in Congress, not the executive branch.