The War Powers Act of 1973 only requires the president to notify congress within 48 hours. The president only needs authorization it troops are deployed for longer than 60 days.

The US drone strikes wherever it feels like, whenever it feels like. In fact, this was reaffirmed in one of the wiki pages you link in another comment:

The authorization granted the president the authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those whom he determined “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11 attacks, or who harbored said persons or groups.

Note that no specific country is mentioned in that, meaning that it gave the president complete, unilateral authority to determine which countries fell into that category and how to respond.

Business Insider has reported that the AUMF has been used to allow military deployment in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iraq, and Somalia. The 2001 AUMF has enabled the US president to unilaterally launch military operations across the world without any congressional oversight or transparency for more than two decades. Between 2018 and 2020 alone, US forces initiated what it labelled “counter-terror” activities in 85 countries. Of these, the 2001 AUMF has been used to launch classified military campaigns in at least 22 countries.

Even now, all Trump would have to do is say he determined that Venezuela at one point “harbored” someone connected to 9/11, there could even be truth to it! If someone tangentially connected at some point might possibly have passed through Venezuela without the government’s knowledge, that’s enough (not that we would even be told the reason). This insanity became the law of the land over 20 years ago, with near-unanimous bipartisan support, and it has survived multiple democratic presidents. Biden invoked it regarding Somalia as recently as 2021.

Welcome to the paying attention club, glad you could join us, but this is absolutely not new.

Yikes guys, Operation Valkyrie seems kinda problematic, that exploding briefcase killed several Nazi officers who just happened to be in the same room as Hitler.

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

I’m Jewish btw you racist fuck.

Damn, that’s some nice bait you got there. In one line, you, accused people of being racist despite not even knowing what race you are, while simultaneously impling that Jews can’t be Nazis. Not only that, you first baselessly accuse anyone who disagrees with you of being a racist, then also accuse them calling anyone who disagrees with them a Nazi.

It seems like you’re just here to troll, but I’m up to give you the benefit of the doubt nonetheless.

Charlie Kirk was an awful person. Being glad that an awful person is dead does not make someone “a piece of shit” or “a psychopath,” unless you consider the vast majority of humanity to fall into one of those categories. How many people celebrated Osama bin Laden’s death? Was every one of those people, “a piece of shit,” and “a psychopath?”

This moral grandstanding about violence is something I did when I was younger and it came from a place of privilege. I had no enemies, I wished no harm on anyone, anywhere. Because why would I? Any fight I came across, I had the potential to simply walk away. Pacifism is an easy position to hold when your life is secure.

But not everyone has the ability to walk away like that. For some people, it’s an existential struggle with nowhere to run and no chance of mercy through surrender. Those people are, most likely going to feel that they do have enemies, people who they’d be glad to see gone. The way you’re judging people so severely for that, I have to question whether you’ve first made an attempt to actually understand their perspective, or whether you’re only considering your own experience.

There are some people who remain committed to pacifism and nonviolence even when under serious threat. They’re very courageous, and often more than a little crazy, but they earn my respect. For every one of them, there’s a bunch more people who use the term to claim moral superiority over everyone based on living in a (literal or metaphorical) gated community, where violence is neither useful nor tempting. Where, rather than nonviolence being a difficult sacrifice, it’s more like an excuse to ignore the plight of those with backs against the wall and condemning them for struggling for survival in a morally impure way.

You strike me as the latter. Maybe I’m wrong, but if the shoe fits, wear it. And, just fyi, nonviolent shit will get you killed.

“Charlie Kirk said that a certain number of kids dying is an acceptable cost of having guns.”

“You brainwashed idiots are making stuff up and falling for outrage bait! What he said, if you look at the full quote, is that a certain number of kids dying is an acceptable cost of having guns, AND a certain amount of traffic fatalities is worth it to have cars.”

“How does that additional context in any way change the relevant part that we find horrible?”

“You should just know, and if you can’t figure out why I think it changes it you’re a fucking idiot.”

What a conversation.

I suppose this is the part where you take offense to me summarizing your position instead of using direct quotes, while not explaining how anything you said is actually meaningfully different.

Will do.

Please tell me specifically what makes this qualify as news. Will you now publish every anniversary from around the world?

No, but this one is important because there are people on here who want to deny these massacres ever happened. Also, it’s an ongoing controversy.

Or are you just another person trying to antagonize Poles and Ukrainians? Because it clearly looks like the latter.

That’s kind of a strange perspective, isn’t it? If someone made a post about the anniversary of, say, The Trail of Tears for example, then I, as an American, would not be offended in the slightest. If I made a post about the Nazi German invasion of Poland, would you say I was “trying to antagonize Germans and Poles?”

Here’s another suggestion perfect for future anniversaries you could commemorate:

Whataboutism.

Makes sense. If we can trust 87 year olds to govern the country, why can’t we trust them to drive? /s

Troll.

I’d just like to remind you that I started out trying to have an intelligent, civil conversation. Sorry you were too dumb to keep up. Sad that this is all you’ve got, I genuinely pity you.

That’s not how logic works, dumbass. That’s not a thing. If you want to apply my standard, you have to apply it consistently.

What you’re probably trying to do, very badly, is a reductio ad absurdum, where you show that accepting my position would lead to an absurd or self-contradictory conclusion. The problem is that my position doesn’t lead to any absurd conclusions, so what you’ve done is assume my position, and then assume the opposite of my position in the same line of logic. Naturally, if you assume self-contradictory positions, then the result will be absurd, but that doesn’t prove anything except that you don’t understand how logic works. It’s not self-contradiction if you have to flip back and forth between your standard and mine to get there.

But then, of course you don’t understand logic because you operate on blind faith.

Let me dumb this down to your level.

“Double” is a word for when you have two of something.

You use one standard when looking at whether the media is lying.

You use another standard when looking at whether I’m lying.

1+1=2

So, you’re using a double standard.

That means that your logic is complete bullshit. End of story.

A child could understand this. If you can’t, you’re either brain damaged or trolling.

Again, you’re literally flipping the standard halfway through your chain of “reasoning” 🤣 You don’t get to apply your absurdly generous standard to them and my reasonable standard to me, that’s not how logic works. You have to either be reasonable in both cases or be absurdly generous in both cases.

It doesn’t really matter how much reason or evidence I present to you, can’t argue with blind faith. It seems you’re not only unwilling to reason and think critically, but unable to.

I weep for our education system. I suppose it’s achieved it’s objective of producing an unquestioningly loyal subject incapable of thinking for yourself or reasoning independently, following whatever your told. You must be an American, because only my countrymen are this confidently stupid.

That’s so obviously a double standard. Apply my rules to both cases, and the media is lying, which means I’m telling the truth. Apply your rules in both cases, and the media isn’t lying, and neither am I. The only possible way you can get to me being a liar is if you apply a more favorable standard to the media, and switch to a more unfavorable standard with me. It’s literally the textbook definition of a double standard.

Your bias is so obvious, and it’s also really fucking stupid. These people are not your friends. You’re no different from people who go around stanning billionaires, against all sense and reason.

No, I presented plenty of evidence. The problem is that you consider anything short of 100% to mean 0% (only when it comes to the media, ofc). Like, you’re expecting me to be able to prove it in a court of law, but obviously there are a lot of things that are true where the evidence doesn’t meet that standard. Even in a court setting, there are situations where they’d be concerned with standards like “more likely than not” or “reasonable cause to believe” rather than the standard you’re applying of, “beyond any reasonable doubt,” for example, if I shot someone in self defense, I wouldn’t have to prove “beyond any reasonable doubt” that they were trying to kill me, only that I had probable cause to believe that was the case. “Beyond any reasonable doubt” is only the standard for a conviction because the state’s monopoly on violence creates a special danger for abuse, and because the state has special abilities and privileges that allow it to conduct investigations, beyond what a private citizen could. To hold private citizens to that standard as a requirement for their beliefs to be considered rational is completely and utterly insane.

I definitely have good reason to believe that the media lies, and I have presented plenty of evidence and arguments to that effect. What I can’t do is present evidence like a signed confession, which obviously would never exist regardless of whether they’re lying or not. If you want to come back down to earth, stop having blind faith in the media, and actually engage with the evidence I have presented, then we can have a discussion. I highly doubt that you have any interest in doing so, in fact, I’m sure that if I had presented the signed confession you’re demanding, you’d dismiss it, move the goalposts, and say it was just an isolated incident. Because you prefer the comfort of your faith over facing the reality the evidence shows.

And there’s the double standard, plain as day. To call me a liar, you would need to prove not only that I said something false, but also that I had knowledge and intent that it was false. Short of a signed confession, you cannot call me a liar, because it’s impossible for you to read my mind. Perhaps I thought there was proof when there wasn’t. Isn’t that what you’re saying is true of the media, for example, with the fake news story the NYT put out? If anyone’s a liar here, it’s you, for accusing me of lying when you can’t meet your own standard of evidence for making that claim.

There’s no point in reasoning with you any more than there is in reasoning with any other religious fanatic operating on blind faith and refusing to apply reason, skepticism, and critical thinking. You’ve simply chosen a worse God to worship.

I have. I just can’t meet an impossible standard of evidence that you’re obviously selectively applying in order to exclude evidence that you want to pretend doesn’t exist.

I don’t know, but it definitely seems like it.

So, are you admitting you can’t actually find a single lie told by Vladimir Putin?

Where are you getting this, “seems like” he lies and “seems like” journalists care about truth and fact checking? Exactly the same number of “lies” have been produced for each in this conversation. I mean, I did link to a fake news story from the NYT but that doesn’t count because I didn’t break into their offices and find a signed confession.

You set an impossibly high standard for proof in the one case, but “seems like” is enough in the other, you’re operating off pure vibes, or more accurately, your own bias and preconceptions, with zero critical thought.

But sure, I stand corrected, they didn’t “lie” in those cases (since basically nobody ever lies, by your absurd standard), they just published blatant falsehoods at just the right time to advance their interests, then suddenly realized their “mistakes” as soon as what they wanted to happen happened.

Jesus loves me The media is reliable, this I know, for the Bible media tells me so. Blind faith rivaling any Bible-thumper.

Ridiculous double standard. Has Putin ever lied, once in his life? Yes or no please, and be prepared to meet your own standard of evidence.

Do you think they’re so incompetent as to leave evidence laying around that they had advance knowledge? I wonder, if that’s the bar you set for US media, do you also set the bar there for, say, Chinese media? If Chinese state media publishes something that’s untrue, would you dispute someone calling it a lie if you didn’t have access to some official document openly confessing to advance knowledge? Even if such records did exist, it’s not as if I, a private citizen, could get a warrant to raid their offices for it. You’re setting the standard unreasonably high, you’re just trying to shut down reasonable skepticism and legitimate criticism in favor of blind trust. I mean, what kind of idiot would write down “I know this story is false but I want you to publish it anyway,” and then leave it lying around where someone could find it, when there’s absolutely no reason to?

Here is an Intercept article about the fake news story published by the NYT to justify Israeli aggression in Gaza.

You’re saying the media knowingly made up stories because they wanted to trick the US into going to war in Vietnam? What specific examples do you have of that?

That’s not what I said at all. The US government wanted to go to war with Vietnam, the media simply wanted to win favor with the government and sell papers.

Were you aware that, in the aftermath of the Kent State Massacre, the vast majority of Americans placed more blame on the students for getting shot than on the National Guard for shooting them? Were you aware that, leading up to the shooting, there were all kinds of fake news stories on TV about how, for example, the protesters were putting LSD into the water supply? Stories that they conveniently retracted, after the moment had passed and the chance for a backlash was gone?

Anyway, the fact that they lie frequently isn’t even the main point. The main currency of propaganda is not lies, it’s emphasis. Biased framing and leading language are perfectly capable of shaping public opinion towards their agenda. Historical events that would justify or explain hostile actions of other countries are very rarely deemed relevant, and the same with internal politics that might show that only certain factions supported it. Our own crimes and acts of aggression are downplayed or ignored, so that when the other side retaliates, it seems to come out of nowhere.

For example, the 1953 coup in Iran, which was conducted by the CIA and successfully covered up for decades, demonstrates that even if Iran had a peaceful, democratic government, it would still likely be subject to US aggression so long as they tried to assert control over their own oil. The breakdown of relations in the 1979 revolution occurred when the revolutionaries took hostages at the US embassy, but what provoked that action was the US granting refuge to the deposed shah - the very same man who they had previously installed as a dictator in 1953. I think both of those events are very important to understanding US-Iranian relations, but you won’t hear the news mention them, the hostage crisis is always presented as this unprovoked act of aggression.

This is just basic media literacy, really. You should always be skeptical and aware of bias and conflicts of interests with anything you read. Unfortunately, there’s a tendency some people have to put certain sources on a pedestal as if critical thinking and skepticism isn’t necessary when reading them.