Monday, August 25, 2008

Stop-Loss

I am presently watching the film Stop-Loss. I haven't finished it yet--I'm little more than 1/4 through it--so I might alter my opinion on this. Nonetheless, I'm going to shoot from the hip on this one.

The story seems to be that a distinguished soldier is about to be discharged from service, but is instead set to redeploy to Iraq due to a clause in his contract known colloquially as "stop-loss"--to stop too many able soldiers from leaving during a time of war. He protests, saying that since the president declared the war over (I presume this is a reference to Bush's infamous "mission accomplished" fiasco), the clause is invalid as it is no longer a time of war.

Since the president cannot declare war (read the Constitution: Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11?--it's Congress's power), he cannot end it. Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 says that the president has the power to make treaties "with the advise and consent of the Senate . . . provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur."

Based upon what I've seen so far, I sympathize with the soldier, but his legal/constitutional argument is not valid.

The moral of this story--based upon the 39 minutes that I have thus watched--is that the government should not be trusted.

By the way, that's the moral of the story in the history of every government that has ever existed and will ever exist.

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