During President Obama’s first term, I represented members of Congress in challenging Obama’s unilateral intervention into the Libyan civil war without authorization of Congress. Our case was dismissed on standing grounds and, once again, an undeclared act of war went by without any opportunity of judicial review. Now, Obama is reportedly debating whether to intervene in yet another civil war — undeterred by the now superfluous constitutional limits on his war-making authority. Israel has also publicly stated that it is considering a preemptive strike on Syria and reserves the right to make such an attack if it feels threatened by events in that civil war. [Update: I discussed this issue as part of my column on the imperial presidency this morning on C-Span]
President Barack Obama said he has been struggling with the decision whether to enter into another war as the 22-month civil war in Syria drags on. Here is what he considers to be the operative question:
“In a situation like Syria, I have to ask: can we make a difference in that situation?”
That is a bit different from the question that the Framers wanted him to ask: “Do I have authority from Congress to engage in a war?” That question is now just a quaint concern for a president who has acquired unprecedented unchecked powers. Once again, the Democrats are silent because it is Obama not Bush who is speaking of war. It is the type of hypocrisy that is not just laughable. It is lethal.
You will notice however that, during all of this public discussion of whether Obama will intervene in yet another war, there is not a peep of protest from Congress that it is supposed to have the final say on whether we go to war. Democrats again, even on war powers, are conspicuously silent — preferring to support Obama as a person than the Constitution on principle.
Of course, now that war is a unilateral power, we will not have an opportunity to debate our participation in yet another war. There will be no debate over the continued loss of American lives in foreign wars like Iraq and Afghanistan. There will be no debate over our continued spending billions on wars that we desperately need to support basic social programs at home. This is precisely why the Framers wanted to force public votes. While polls show the American people have long opposed our continued expenditure of lives and treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama and Congress have continued our involvement. Indeed, our slow withdrawal is due not to our leaders seeking to draw down but increasingly hostile relationships with our “allies” who want us out of their respective countries. The disconnect with the American public is alarming. We have taken a balanced and well-reasoned system and turned it on its head. The result is precisely what the Framers anticipated: continued foreign wars carried out on a unilateral basis.
Source: Yahoo
gbk
1, January 28, 2013 at 6:39 am
“The drums are also beating loudly in Israel:”
Judith Miller, is that you?
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Exactly!! By this time and given the experience of the last decade, we should all be able to read the signs.
What happened to the title “President” before the last name of the sitting President when discussed in a news article? I know that the East Coast highfluetten societal families miss having a Roosevelt or a Kennedy or a Bush in the White House. Scions of great family names. Yale historians can go on and on about those families and live off of the foundations named after JFK or RFK. So, its natural to denigrate some man of the people who gets elected out of Illinois and who is a minority race. Obama this and Obama that. Teacher, teacher, I declare…. aint nobody gonna call you Professor, no one will call the preacher Reverend, no one will call the guy with the ear device Doctor, and even the Indian Chief will be relegated to JoeBob.
You know Guardian, there are lost souls traversing this earth. You should know that….. Not everyone that hears the truth, is wired to accept the truth…. Good luck…
The lost soul is Satan. Those that accept him have death in them willingly giving it. The body always before death has the chance to seek God resisting him to become like a humble child.
I am utterly amazed at the hypocrisy in defending Obama. I love it when people that apparently did not support him come to his defense and denounce anyone for disagreeing with them. They must really hate to look in the mirror. They must be the most disagreeable people to be around.
Sheeeese
rafflaw 1, January 28, 2013 at 10:19 am
In fairness, the source document linked by Prof. Turley does not note whether Obama is planning on making any decisions to deploy troops without getting Congressional approval first. He still has the opportunity to get Congressional approval, but we all know how easy it is to get Congress to agree with President Obama.
Obama was responding to criticisms that he hasn’t done enough in Syria and other hot spots so we should be glad that he hasn’t sent troops into all of these places already. Is there oil in Syria?
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Good eye rafflaw!
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/20/wapoabc-poll-shows-americans-opposed-to-intervention-in-syria-unless/ (see graph)
“While Americans broadly prefer to stay out of direct involvement in the conflict in Syria, support for U.S. military action soars in the event of a loss of control of its chemical weapons, the use of such weapons on the Syrian people or an attack on neighboring U.S. allies.”
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel must prepare for the threat of a chemical attack from Syria as the army deployed its new Iron Dome anti- missile system near the border with its northern neighbor.
Netanyahu told members of the Cabinet during the weekly meeting in Jerusalem today that Israel faces dangers from throughout the Middle East. Top security officials held a special meeting last week to discuss what may happen to Syrian stocks of chemical weapons amid the civil unrest there, Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom told Army Radio.
“We must look around us, at what is happening in Iran and its proxies and at what is happening in other areas, with the deadly weapons in Syria, which is increasingly coming apart,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet, according to an e-mailed statement.
Syrian rebels, mostly Sunni Muslims, have been fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad since March 2011 in a conflict that the United Nations says has left at least 60,000 people dead. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.
The Iron Dome system, which was used to shoot down hundreds of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip during Israel’s November conflict with Hamas and other militant groups, is being deployed at an unspecified site in the north, according to an Israeli army spokeswoman. She spoke anonymously in accordance with military regulations and said setting up the anti-missile battery was part of routine operations.
Israeli forces must be particularly alert during the period following last week’s election in which Netanyahu is trying to form a new coalition government and enemies are looking for signs of weakness, the prime minister said. Netanyahu’s Likud- Beitenu alliance lost 11 parliamentary seats in the vote and the prime minister said he needs a broad and stable coalition to deal with security threats from the region. ” Bloomberg news
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/world/middleeast/refugee-crisis-grows-as-violence-flares-across-syria.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/28/us-obama-syria-idUSBRE90R00V20130128 Link to above
In a pair of interviews, Obama responded to critics who say the United States has not been involved enough in Syria, where thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced according to U.N. officials. Transcripts of both interviews were released on Sunday.
The United States has called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, and has recognized an opposition coalition – but has stopped short of authorizing U.S. arming of rebels to overthrow Assad.
“In a situation like Syria, I have to ask: can we make a difference in that situation?” Obama said in an interview with The New Republic published on the magazine’s website.
Obama said he has to weigh the benefit of a military intervention with the ability of the Pentagon to support troops still in Afghanistan, where the United States is withdrawing combat forces after a dozen years of war.
“Could it trigger even worse violence or the use of chemical weapons? What offers the best prospect of a stable post-Assad regime?
“And how do I weigh tens of thousands who’ve been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?” he said.
Obama’s comments come as world leaders gathered in Davos, Switzerland, said they wished the United States were more engaged in geopolitical issues such as the conflicts in Syria and Mali, where France is attacking al Qaeda-affiliated militants.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Saturday that the United States will fly tankers to refuel French jet fighters, expanding U.S. involvement, which had been limited to sharing intelligence and providing airlift support.
In an interview with CBS television program “60 Minutes,” Obama bristled when asked to respond to criticism that the United States has been reluctant to engage in foreign policy issues like the Syrian crisis.
Obama said his administration put U.S. warplanes into the international effort to oust Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and led a push to force Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from office.
But in Syria, his administration wants to make sure U.S. action would not backfire, he said.
“We do nobody a service when we leap before we look, where we … take on things without having thought through all the consequences of it,” Obama told CBS.
“We are not going to be able to control every aspect of every transition and transformation” in conflicts around the world, he said. “Sometimes they’re going to go sideways.”
(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
From a recent Washington Post article by Bob Woodward:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bob-woodward-why-obama-picked-hagel-for-defense-secretary/2013/01/27/b87eb8ce-68ae-11e2-af53-7b2b2a7510a8_story.html
Excerpt:
When I interviewed President Obama in the summer of 2010 for my book “Obama’s Wars,” his deeply rooted aversion to war was evident. As I reported in the book, I handed Obama a copy of a quotation from Rick Atkinson’s World War II history, “The Day of Battle,” and asked him to read it. Obama stood and read:
“And then there was the saddest lesson, to be learned again and again . . . that war is corrupting, that it corrodes the soul and tarnishes the spirit, that even the excellent and the superior can be defiled, and that no heart would remain unstained.”
“I sympathize with this view,” Obama told me. “See my Nobel Prize acceptance speech.”
I had listened to the speech when he gave it, Dec. 10, 2009, and later read it, but I dug it out again. And there it was:
“The instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another — that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious” — Churchill had called it that — “and we must never trumpet it as such. So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths — that war is sometimes necessary and war at some level is an expression of human folly.”
That is probably the best definition of the Obama doctrine on war.
(End of excerpt)
In fairness, the source document linked by Prof. Turley does not note whether Obama is planning on making any decisions to deploy troops without getting Congressional approval first. He still has the opportunity to get Congressional approval, but we all know how easy it is to get Congress to agree with President Obama.
Obama was responding to criticisms that he hasn’t done enough in Syria and other hot spots so we should be glad that he hasn’t sent troops into all of these places already. Is there oil in Syria?
Mespo:
The Assad family should have been destroyed long ago. I went to school with a Syrian, Sam. What a great guy he was too. I dont know if all Syrians are like Sam, probably not, but they certainly deserve better than to live in tyranny. But then I have gone to school with Egyptians and one of my father’s best friends was an Egyptian and they were/are good people too.
But now we have a new tyranny in Egypt most likely worse than the old tyranny and probably more blood thirsty. The same will probably be said of Syria in a couple of years if we remove Assad. We only exchange one tyrant for another who, in all probability, will be worse.
I for one am tired, we have seen 12 years of war, thousands of our sons and daughters have died, tens of thousands have grievous wounds for what? So some 9th century barbarians can continue to be barbarians? I hate George Bush and Dick Cheney and John Bolton and the likes of Bill Krystal, they have destroyed our country with endless war and fascism.
They were too stupid to understand the threat or too in bed with the threat to actually do what was needed to defeat the evil. The threat was never Al Qaeda or Sadam or the Taliban; the threat is Saudi Arabian Wahhabism and Iran. The threat is still alive and kicking and pretty soon it will be in control of an atomic weapon. Bush and now Obama have done nothing to make us more secure and now on top of that we are a budding police state.
The invasions of Libya, Syria, and Iran (and other nations) were planned by the epigovernment long ago before Obama arrived to give wonderful speeches, according to General Wesley Clark.
General Clark called it a coup:
I’m just hoping these clowns have learned how to protect our state dept personnel. First, “GET THEM THE HELL OUT. Then, KEEP THEM OUT UNTIL YOU HAVE PROPER SECURITY IN PLACE. Finally, HAVE SOME PRETEXT IN PLACE IN CASE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN..AND MAKE IT BETTER THAN THE STUPID MOHAMMED MOVIE ONE. Let’s see if Kerry can perform better than Hillary in this regard.
Was trying to figure out the recent switch of Colleen Powell to Obama’s camp. This explains it. Obama will not by pass congress this time but will put Colleen out there to show the world Assad has weapons of mass destruction. MORE WAR FOR OIL. Syrians have a ton of it.
Mark,
Jefferson didn’t live in a time where Libya had nuclear capable allies and don’t even get me started on the ridiculousness that is the War on a Noun and the Constitutional and civil/human rights abuses that bullshit is used to excuse on behalf of the previous and the sitting President. A Presidency with no checks on Executive Power is effectively a serial dictatorship. Mixed message or not, if we are to believe in the efficacy of a representative form of government, we must take the mixed messages with the clear and act based upon majority consensus, not Imperial whim as a substitute especially when the matter at hand is as serious as going to war on yet another front. Jefferson is also a exception due to his innate intelligence and prudence being sufficient for such a decision albeit questionable from process standpoint. Obama is no Jefferson. “The evils which of necessity encompass the life of man are sufficiently numerous. Why should we add to them by voluntarily distressing and destroying one another? Peace, brothers, is better than war. In a long and bloody war, we lose many friends, and gain nothing. Let us then live in peace and friendship together, doing to each other all the good we can.” – Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson knew war to be a last resort. Current events and recent history show that the Executive thinks war to be a first tier option if not the preferred solution. And that’s the problem with serial dictators – each is subject to their own strength in or lack of wisdom, intelligence and ethics and it is the citizens who very often pay the price for their failings.
Human suffering is a not reason to enter a war in a country where we have no idea what we are supporting. We have supported our enemies enemy in the past thinking that they were our friends or better than our enemy and have been badly and violently surprised. The countries in this region have an obligation to do something. We do not belong in Syria. If you need an example look no further than Egypt billions for the new dictator Morsi while our own people go without food, health care and roads and bridges. Look no further than Saudi Arabia. We saved them from Sadam and they persecute non Muslims and treat women like….. No more support or protection for theocracies..
I feel for the people of Syria but the US cannot and should not see itself and the worlds policeman or the worlds savior.
gene H:
Had Jefferson waited for Congress to act on his proposals to deal with the Barbary pirates we would still be paying tribute to Tripoli. The simple fact is that Congress always sends mixed messages in times of war except in the most egregious cases due to political considerations. See the War on Terror. The President has every right to act in furtherance of national interests if the circumstances so arise and destabilization of the Middle East by either exodus of civilian populations to neighboring countries or employment of weapons of mass destruction certainly calls for prompt action. I have no issue with the President asking Congress to act, but like Jefferson I would act first and seek approval later if the nation’s interests so demanded.
Mark,
As you can see… I said so long as its not for profit but actual peace…. Why not… I agree that human suffering is a rational reason to go…. I also think we have unfinished business with taking care of American folks that have been defrauded by the American Banksters….