A Defense Department functionary published an op-ed in The Hill this week falsely claiming that Donald Trump faces unprecedented resistance to executive power. The author throws “scholars” shade at President Truman and then signs his byline “a civilian employee of the War Department.”
The War Department was abolished in 1947.
Erick Chomskis is a good example of why.
He is not randomly picking Truman as an example (along with references to Carter, Clinton and Obama). He apparently has been tasked by someone to attack the architect of the system that constrains war crimes. The “War Department” signature isn’t cosplay, it’s an ideological marker. It rejects the entire post-Truman civilian oversight architecture.
Truman built the guardrails. In 1947 he set civil rights and the anti-fascist precedents the GOP hate. Notably, after he fired the “dumb son of a bitch” General MacArthur in 1951 for refusing to respect civilian authority… in 1960 Truman correctly warned that Nixon was “a no good lying bastard” and told voters that anyone who supported him “ought to go to hell.” He also said as much about the 1948 GOP in public.
PRESIDENT LIKENS DEWEY TO HITLER AS FASCISTS’ TOOL; Says When Bigots, Profiteers Get Control of Country They Select ‘Front Man’ to Rule DICTATORSHIP STRESSED Truman Tells Chicago Audience a Republican Victory Will Threaten U.S. Liberty TRUMAN SAYS GOP PERILS U.S. LIBERTY
Nailed it.
So Chomskis is revisiting a very particular angle of propaganda, spreading specific falsehoods about Truman, to reverse the defenses of democracy against fascism.
Writing Wrong History is Wrong
Chomskis claims Truman’s Korea intervention established a precedent for unilateral presidential action.
…what scholars call the “Korean precedent” for unilateral presidential action in armed conflicts.
This is absurdly false.
Truman acted under UN Security Council Resolution 83. The State Department meticulously documented the intervention as an international police action as intended under the emergent UN authority. Congress appropriated funds and extended the draft. Contested? Sure, because politics, duh. Unilateral? Not even close.
Let me be even more clear, to help the scholars Chomskis wants to invoke on this, because they actually contradict him.
Chomskis’ claim that Korea established a “precedent for unilateral presidential action” is brain dead. Truman explicitly ordered multilateral “police action” as a peace-time operation. It was the most exact opposite of Trump’s random acts of unilateral war.
Chomskis similarly screws up his claims that Obama “ordered military intervention in Libya in 2011 without a congressional vote.”
Nope.
He omits how Obama reacted under UN Security Council Resolution 1973, reported to Congress within 48 hours per the War Powers Resolution, and faced sustained Republican criticism almost as bad as the time he wore a tan suit.
Come on. America must have a shortage of historians because this op-ed is unfit for print.
Every example Chomskis cites operated within international legal frameworks. Yet Chomskis omits all the legal frameworks, to compare with Trump who ignores legal frameworks. That’s the whole ruse of his disinformation.
Trump’s Caribbean bombing campaign is within no legal framework, unlike how Presidents before him operated. The comparison being made isn’t about any real precedent. It’s a targeted attack on Truman, telling wrong history, corrupting the record, with shameless war propaganda.
Double Standard Donald
Chomskis is upside down and backwards as a sloppy propaganda tactic.
The establishment (Republican House) that couldn’t stop itself from puking all over Obama about Libya has said nothing about Trump bombing Venezuelan ports without congressional authorization.
The party that went absolutely bananas about executive overreach now eagerly watches Trump refuse to spend congressionally appropriated funds, and says nothing.
The “establishment” supposedly persecuting Trump? That’s his own congressional majority, who are maintaining perfect silence.
Trump is committing obvious war crimes and is the literal opposite of Truman.
He faces no impeachment proceedings. No congressional war powers challenges. No resistance from the establishment on any constitutional question. The unprecedented persecution of Trump exists not at all, unless you count Chomskis’ disinformation.
Fiction Function
The Hill piece is an information operations product of the military—strategic omissions producing false conclusions from grains of truth.
Strip all legal frameworks, ignore all major details, erase congressional responses, and you can make anything look like a precedent.
The target audience probably aren’t historians and won’t know the UN resolutions. They’ll share because a “War Department” just produced a hit piece on Truman.
Chomskis is literally arguing in his conclusion that constraints on executive power threaten the republic—when unconstrained executive power is the actual threat to republics. This is weapons-grade military propaganda, pushing fascist inversion dressed in constitutional language.
His bonkers framing suggests that only elected officials (i.e. Trump) have legitimate authority, which is precisely the argument authoritarians make to dismantle checks and balances. His “permission slip” fear is pure projection. Trump constantly talks and operates as if the presidency IS a permission slip for him personally, from no one.
The byline of Chomskis is the signature. A defense bureaucrat calling his employer by its pre-Truman name is not confused about institutional attacks. He is announcing revisionism to promote fascism, choosing the wrong side of history.
The Hill served this state-run Trump disinformation sausage without correction. Draw your own conclusions about what The Hill has become.