Their decisions are usually influenced by internal government propaganda, which is now called spin in the West as part of the general approach of taking inconvenient meaning out of words where politics and general bullshit like rabid feminism are concerned, put out by a government to persuade the populace to support its, as distinct from the nation’s, cause.
Witness Dubya, Blair and Howard on Iraq, supported by their right wing press and commentators in the face of stunningly weak evidence as exemplifed by Colin Powell’s embarrassing performance in the UN which those of us with half a brain could see was facile bullshit and which even Powell subsequently backed away from http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-09-08-powell-iraq_x.htm , but only after he’d done the damage.
As for the uninformed and emotive aspects, witness the cheering crowds in Britain as their forces left for the Falklands, compared with the shock soon after when they realised that it wasn’t going to be a cake walk and people actually get killed and maimed in war.
Gilbert’s interview with Goering during the Nuremberg trials sums up the conflict between leading and being led on war.
Goering: Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Goering: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Gilbert’s democratic confidence that only Congress can declare war is at odds with American experience, which reflects another aspect of governments deceiving their people or people deceiving themselves about their institutions.
Although the U. S. Constitution grants to Congress alone the authority to declare war, over the life of the Republic the Presidency has come to be the principal instrument not only for the nation to wage war, as the Founding Fathers intended, but to initiate warfare, as well. In their capacity as Commander in Chief of the armed forces under the Constitution, Presidents frequently have used military, naval, and air might to accomplish the nation’s ends abroad. According to one authority,1 since the late 18th century, the nation’s armed forces – at the direction of the President – have been involved in well over 350 incidents, “police actions,” and other shows of force. Between the close of World War II and the early 1990s, the United States military suffered one-half million battle casualties, even though the nation technically was never at war.2 Since 1973 and the end of America’s participation in the costly and prolonged but undeclared Vietnam War, geographic locales deemed suitable by the nation’s chief executive for the application of military force have included Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, the Persian Gulf, Panama, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia.3
Scholars thus can list hundreds of instances, large and small, protracted and limited in duration, of the application of armed force initiated or directed by the President, beginning even before 1800. The Congress, on the other hand, has had occasion only five times to exercise its authority to declare war under Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution: in 1812 against Britain, 1846 against Mexico, 1898 against Spain, 1917 against Germany and other Central Powers, and in 1941 against Japan, Germany, and other Axis nations.
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_1/milsvc_I.html
Democracy, whatever that means to different people, is a great idea. But as the American experience shows even constitutional limitations on the power to declare war didn’t inhibit presidents acting like dictators in committing America to real, even if undeclared, wars.
Which perhaps says more about the weaknesses of representative democracy in a two party political system and the craven obedience to party interests of elected representatives than it does about democratic ideals.
