January 9, 2024
The Roots of Lawfare
By Dennis Lund
Although the term “Lawfare” has origins going back to the 1950s, it remained relatively dormant and unknown until 1999 and 2001, where first Chinese military officers used the term in their book titled Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America. Two years later, the term was used in a paper by the highly respected, then-Air Force colonel (and later general) Charles Dunlap. In his several papers on the subject General Dunlap defined “Lawfare” as: “the strategy of using -- or misusing -- law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective.”
The first nationally infamous use of “lawfare” was most likely the battle in 2005 to remove Tom Delay (R Texas) from his position as Speaker of the House. The vendetta against Tom Delay was led by one Ronnie Earle, the DA in Austin, Texas who had a strong dislike for Delay (One might call it TDDS). Ultimately the case was overturned on appeal, but the battle was won, as Delay was removed from office. Recognize that one of the purposes of Lawfare is to remove the person from the political scene.
Republicans have been slow to react to this strategy, as they seem to have an unwarranted trust in the goodness of Democrats to be fair and reasonable people. One person who did see the importance of the Judicial system to be used by Democrats was then candidate Donald Trump in 2016. His bold move in establishing a list of eleven (after the election, expanded to 21) potential nominees to the Supreme Court stood as a major reason to vote for him for many people. The move not only increased his likelihood for success but it served to place a focus on the need to shift the courts from a left-leaning entity towards the middle and potentially past the middle into the conservative zone.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/01/the_roots_of_lawfare.html
