r/nottheonion • u/NicolasCageFan492 • 1d ago

America 'not at war' with Canada, insists U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bessent-carney-tariffs-trade-war-9.7326851
2.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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780

u/RealLavender 1d ago

Narrator: America doesn't consider attacking other countries "war."

149

u/Green-Cricket-8525 1d ago

“Special police action”

34

u/Dry_Ass_P-word 1d ago

Sounds like something from Paw Patrol.

24

u/shadedmagus 1d ago

Or the Kremlin.

12

u/tdw21 1d ago

Literally the Iran “military operation”.

5

u/Lazy_meatPop 1d ago

Operation " Close the straits and raise gas prices for my billionaires buddies to make record profit " .

1

u/Dotura 16h ago

The Kremlin purposefully uses American terms as a "What you gonna do America, you did this exact thing too with your illegal wars. Calling us out on wording only opens a can of worms for you too". At one point parts of Bush's speech was used.

9

u/Green-Cricket-8525 1d ago

ACAB (including the class traitors from Paw Patrol)

3

u/Nope-not-really 22h ago

Paw Patrol is Canadian

1

u/HornetParticular4918 20h ago

Fucking Mayor Humdinger

149

u/GildedDreams25 1d ago

this is the thing, the guard rails are broken, america will never formally declare war ever again, we will just attack shit, because otherwise we can’t get it thru congress

74

u/aeroxan 1d ago

Start a war with this one weird trick. Congress hates it.

40

u/GildedDreams25 1d ago

if only they had a fucking spine…

42

u/fucktheus12 1d ago

That's criminal, so if you guys could just get your shit together we'd all appreciate it.

25

u/GildedDreams25 1d ago

yep. you, me and about 45% of the country agree with you, the rest either like this because they’re evil, or they’re too stupid to care

5

u/Drudgework 20h ago

The majority of citizens in this country actually, but polling is unscientific and easily screwed. Also certain people need to be reminded that this is what happens when you don’t vote.

1

u/Knowledge_is_Bliss 9h ago

Half the country has no fucking idea what's even happening. They literally are not paying any attention to anything outside of their bubble, and couldn't care less.

6

u/gnurdette 1d ago

Ha ha ha, "law". Such a charming concept. Are we doing a historical re-enactment? Should I break out my whalebone corset?

1

u/Dashing_McHandsome 8h ago

Not according to our supreme court. Our president has immunity for "official acts" during his tenure. Use of the military almost certainly falls under that category, as much as I hate it. This past decade has taught us we need several constitutional amendments. Things we just assumed before, and that elected officials just did, are no longer true. The only way to fix that is to write this shit down and make it a rule. For example, the president shouldn't be above the law.

1

u/TheFrostynaut 21h ago

Sorry dude we only regime change other countries.

3

u/RedditTechAnon 16h ago

It's not like some flag on the world state gets flipped from peace to war and everyone on the server gets an INT stat penalty.

1

u/joshuahtree 21h ago

†Republicans will never start a war again, Democrats will be impeached and executed if they try the same

19

u/primax1uk 23h ago

According to America, it has only ever been in two actual wars; ww1 and ww2. Every other conflict has been 'special military action', 'peacekeeping mission' or similar bullshit justification.

And it's been involved in conflicts for around 225-230 of its 250 year lifespan.

3

u/Drudgework 20h ago

So what was the explanation for the revolutionary war and the civil war?

11

u/willun 18h ago

OP is only slightly wrong. He is correct that the last two times the US declared war was WWI and WWII. There were three other times but they were the war of 1812, the Mexican war of 1846 and the Spanish American war of 1898.

All a bit embarrassing really.

On at least 125 occasions, the president has acted without prior express military authorization from Congress.

I bet they have a Wikipedia editor on standby to update that section

And the answer for the civil war is there too

The American Civil War was not an international conflict under the laws of war, because the Confederate States of America (CSA) was not a government that had been granted full diplomatic recognition as a sovereign nation by other sovereign states[47][48] or by the government of the United States.[49] As such, the statutory authority for the use of the military during the American Civil War was the Insurrection Act of 1807.[50][e]

2

u/primax1uk 14h ago

Yep, basically this. Thanks for responding.

7

u/Warlord68 1d ago

Venezuela has entered the conversation.

4

u/AstralVoidShaper 22h ago

Yeah, we don't use that anymore. We call it "peacekeeping" as proclaimed by the Department of War. They have War in the name, of course they know what they're talking about.

1

u/Proximus88 1d ago

Reminds me of this clip: https://youtu.be/g1z_xtOmgek

1

u/Dizzy-Cartoonist3011 9h ago

What do you mean by "attack"? Is this just an extremely metaphorical way to describe tariffs? This is like the most far fetched metaphor I've ever seen.

-8

u/dmont89 1d ago

It's bringing freedom and democracy to the less civilized world.

2

u/metametapraxis 22h ago

I assume you omitted an "/s", and the downvoters think you had a straight face.