President Obama is again asserting his right to act unilaterally and without congressional approval in going to war. In what has become a mantra for this Administration, Obama reportedly told members of Congress that he does not need congressional approval to unleash a comprehensive military campaign against the Islamic State. The President informed a few members at a dinner — a striking image of how low congressional authority has become in our tripartite system of government.
We have been discussing the growing concerns over President Barack Obama’s series of unilateral actions in ordering agencies not to enforce law, effectively rewriting laws, and moving hundreds of millions of dollars from appropriated purposes to areas of his choosing. One of the greatest concerns has been his unchecked authority asserted in the national security area. I previously represented members of Congress in challenging Obama’s intervention in the Libyan civil war without a declaration from Congress. In the case, President Obama insisted that he alone determines what is a war and therefore when he needs a declaration. Since the court would not recognize standing to challenge the war, it left Obama free to engage in war operations in any country of his choosing. As with his approach in Libya, Syria and other combat operations (and most recently on whether he will resume the war in Iraq), Obama is again asserting his extreme view of executive power.
As in the past, Democrats are not just silent but actually applauding the circumvention of Congress — a precedent that will likely come back to haunt them if the next president is a Republican.
I have repeatedly testified (here and here and here and here) and wrote a column on President Obama’s increasing circumvention of Congress in negating or suspending U.S. laws. However, war is a particularly egregious form of this unilateralism since the Framers worked hard to limit such powers under Article I and Article II.
Not only is the United States about to enter a new military campaign based solely on the President’s authority but he is promising to fight to the Islamic State “wherever their strategic targets are.” That may suggest additional violation of international law if the United States acts unilaterally with regard to the borders of foreign nations. Michèle Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defense for policy, seems to anticipate and support such actions. She is quoted as saying “This is not an organization that respects international boundaries. You cannot leave them with a safe haven.” For some countries, that view may seem quite threatening since the United States has been repeatedly accused of bombing and conducting operations in other countries without approval.
Once again, we are left with the questions of any limiting principle to this new uber-presidency. A president can now unleash a military campaign without congressional approval that could involve multiple nations. Yet, Congress seems content, again, to watch in a purely pedestrian role as if this invitation to a “dinner” is a sufficient substitute for congressional authorization. While it is not a check or balance, the president did pick up the check.
Source: Washington Post
nick, You complained incessantly about Elaine’s factual links. I guess uninterrupted spin is the preferred modus operandi.
Most of us appreciate those who take the trouble to post links and make cogent comments, good work SWM. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!
Swm is good at her facts ….may not like em…
” What would we do w/o SWM giving us all the talking points. God bless her.” nick Really, David Frum is a republican former Bush speechwriter. Is the fact that Boehner does not want to schedule a vote a talking point? Well, maybe in your fantastical fanatical world
SWM – I would think that Boehner not wanting to take a vote until he heard a strategy makes sense to me, given this President’s record.
What would we do w/o SWM giving us all the talking points. God bless her.
http://m.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/obama-speech-iraq-syria-isis-war/379979/ “Those of us associated with the Bush administration bear the burden of having launched a war on false premises that then yielded disappointing results. It’s a heavy responsibility, and one most of us have struggled with in our various ways. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of it. But it’s one thing to fail to achieve your aims. It’s another to start a war with no discernible aims at all. It’s not crass, not narrow, not unethical for the president of the United States to test any proposed foreign policy—and most especially the use of armed force—against the criterion: “How will this benefit my nation?” That test is not a narrow one. The protection of allies is an important U.S. interest. The honoring of international commitments is an important U.S. interest. And it could even be argued that humanitarian action can be justified when it will save many lives, at low cost in American blood and treasure, without creating even worse consequences inadvertently. This new campaign against ISIS does not even pretend to meet that test. It’s a reaction: an emotional reaction, without purpose, without strategy, and without any plausible—or even articulated—definition of success.”
The quote about “owning” the black vote for 200 years most certainly was. My info on LBJ comes from Caro, Goodwin and Kessler. Although I do like Oliver’s show. Did he talk about LBJ? I have it DVRed but haven’t watched it yet. I am sparing folks here what LBJ called the Voting Right Bill and MUCH MORE nasty stuff. Don’t want anyone having a stroke on my account.
Paulette, it was an “Oh look, squirrel!” comment.
Fix: … eg, the post-war finding of “a large covert procurement program, undeclared chemical laboratories, and supported denial and deception operations” in the IIS, Saddam’s regime arm that was notorious for its work with terrorists.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/will-there-be-vote-isis-strikes “Cheney’s visit marked a sort of coming out party for Republican hawks, who polls show are rapidly gaining support among GOP voters after years in which the non-interventionists, led by Cheney nemesis Rand Paul, had the momentum.
“It was a great message – and something we needed to hear and hopefully it sticks with a lot of my colleagues who kind of had this creep towards isolationism,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) told the Los Angeles Times. “Hopefully this is an awakening that we have to be very strong and very serious.”
Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) told The Daily Beast that Cheney accused Obama of “facilitating the Muslim Brotherhood,” the Islamic movement that won elections in Egypt only to be deposed by the military, while CNN reported that Cheney dinged Obama for not demanding the US leave a residual force behind while negotiating a withdrawal with the Iraqi government.
The reemergence of Cheney, whose legacy of expansive executive power and aggressive foreign policy is still controversial even within the GOP, comes as Congressional leaders are trying to determine how to respond to Obama’s escalating campaign against the Islamic State.
On Tuesday, Republican House Speaker John Boehner declined to commit to Congressional votes on military action against ISIS – or to rule out ground troops – until after he meets with the White House to hear their broader plan.
“We have a very serious problem that demands a strategy and, until there is a strategy, there is no reason to talk about any of the specifics,” Boehner told reporters.”
Annie,
Have you read yet the primary sources for the law and policy basis of the Iraq mission that I’ve cited, linked, and even quoted for you?
In particular, UNSCRs 687, 688, 1441, PLs 105-235, 107-243, Clinton’s enforcement precedent, and the UNMOVIC Cluster Document (“about 100 unresolved disarmament issues”) that was the main trigger for OIF, with the ISG Duelfer Report for additional insight – eg, the post-war finding of “a large covert procurement, undeclared chemical laboratories, and supported denial and deception operations” in the IIS, Saddam’s regime arm that was notorious for its work with terrorists.
The false narrative against the Iraq mission is patient zero. It’s the metastatic malignant tumor. It’s the thorn infecting the limping lion. And you’re right that the false narrative has, by now, infected Democrats and Republicans alike.
Enough social political harm has spread and compounded from the Democrats’ original cynical gambit to adopt Saddam’s and Russia’s propaganda into American domestic politics that setting the record straight on Iraq is no longer enough by itself to cure our corrupted social political dialogue and schema. But curing patient zero is the necessary foundational step to fix everything else.
The simple admission by President Obama to Congress and the American People that ‘President Bush was right on Iraq.’ would go a long way to clarifying our national dialogue on Iraq, ISIS, and American leadership for the global contests moving forward. But yes, that necessary act by Obama won’t by itself be enough to fix the corruption that Obama helped to cause in order to be elected President in the first place.
Obama has his work cut out for him, but setting the record straight in order to effectively lead America forward is Obama’s duty and particularly with his culpability, Obama’s moral responsibility.
Nick ~
I also watched Last Week Tonight with John Oliver this week-end and saw his piece on LBJ. I just didn’t see how that was germane to the Camus quote.
Yes Paul, you’re probably right. Poor parenting always shows itself in adult children.
SWM – I am always glad to hear from the military strategists at The Atlantic. Where would we be without them. Their arm-chair generals have led us through many a war, while their boots never left their living room.
Oh yeah… forgot to include Johnson in there. We’ll throw him right in too.
That’s my point. Unbeknownst to most Americans, there was a world before 9-11. These political situations done wrongly in the past will come back to haunt everyone. Wilson’s flights of insanity are still jabbing at us today. Now we have Obama ready to pile on his ludicrous actions.
DBQ, BRAVA!! And the ones who often cry the loudest are alleged feminists!! I call them Blanche DuBois feminists. But lets cut the BS, LBJ is a Dem “hero.” That’s the problem. I’m pulling punches on LBJ. He was a racist pig!
History should not be whitewashed and sanitized. We need to face the history, the raw and the ugly as well as the good and noble, recognize it for what it was and how we got to where we are today.
To go all Victorian verklempt, have the vapors and need to waft smelling salts because people in the past actually said bad words or were politically incorrect is really quite ridiculous.
How are we ever to learn from the past if we pretend it didn’t exist or change it so it doesn’t hurt our delicate feelings?
Yes, the Kurds claimed lands are all over the place there, but that all goes back to the way the world was divided up after WWI. That was going to be re-examined some day. Guess that’s now. Just like the former Yugoslavia. The Turkish army could wipe out ISIS in a couple of days, but why would they? And why would we get in the middle of that?? I know… just sayin’. Plenty of military hardware gets sold and used and has to be replaced. You know the military lobbyists are all over this opportunity.
There is a book called “War Merchant’ about the used arms trade. The US is the largest trader in used arms in the world. When we sell someone the newer version of something, we take the old ones in trade and sell them someplace else.
@davidm, this is an interesting issue because it crosses party lines and is truly an Executive/Legislative issue, the tension between Congress’ War Power and the President’s power as C-in-C. The courts basically don’t want to get involved and when they are involved, see: Reagan’s invasion of Grenada: Conyers v Reagan…..to a certain extent the ‘settled’ doctrine would be that the Executive Branch and Legislative branch PREFER an ‘unsettled’ doctrine rather than risk losing the constitutional power in question. If you ask me personally, particularly in this day and age when Congress can be summoned much more quickly (we really should do away with the concept of ‘recess entirely’), the President should require congressional authorization in these cases, I don’t care if its Reagan in Grenada or Obama striking ISIS. The reason the War Power was delegated to Congress was precisely because the Founders understood the potential for abuse that comes with the power to wage war. If the President can utilize military force in a manner which can obviously embroil us in a war unilaterally, the separation of powers would, in my opinion, appear to be violated. Realistically, the answer on the bar exam is that Obama ‘can’ do this based on ‘precedent’ – ‘precedent’ being the de facto use of military force appurtenant to the War Powers Act since the 1970s.
There are plenty of taped phone calls of LBJ telling incredibly vulgar jokes and his racism is on full display.