Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Using U.S. military forces to (1) bomb small boats in international waters, (2) kidnap a head of state in his own country, and (3) to steal oil tankers in international waters are all obvious acts of war.

No amount of legal-sounding excuses can hide the truth of what is happening before our eyes. And yet all of these acts of war are at the direction of one man—President Donald Trump, despite the absence of a declaration of war. Only Congress can declare war, according to the Constitution. The president can only manage the war after Congress has declared it. Unfortunately, Congress, over the years, has written several wishy-washy laws and passed resolutions that can be used by some fast-talkers to justify the transfer of power to declare wars to the President.

So, we now have the President both declaring and directing war on Venezuela. This concentration of power in one man’s hands cannot, and will not, end well. Without widespread public support for the horrors of war, the U.S. will be defeated once again as it was in similar undeclared wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

How long will it take us to see the insanity of leaving such power in the hands of one man? The first step to sanity is for Congress to retroactively outlaw all previous resolutions and laws such as the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). The peace of the world and the prosperity of the U.S. depend on it.

Eric Stewart
Mathews, Va.