Clearing Up a President's War-Making Powers
A high-profile panel calls for better rules for a president and Congress before a military conflict
It's the most profound of government decisions—when to launch war or hostilities—but the way American presidents and the Congress make such life-and-death decisions is downright dysfunctional. A high-profile bipartisan panel is acknowledging that failure and proposing to restore some order to the process of decision making—though without attempting to answer the sticky constitutional questions that loom over it.
The commission report, made public yesterday, avoids any retrospective critiques. However, President Bush's expansive assertion of executive power after 9/11 and during the Iraq war has put the war powers conundrum back on the table. So, too, has Congress's continuing unwillingness—some say failure—to fully press its supposedly central constitutional role in war decision-making.
The National War Powers Commission, a nongovernmental panel cochaired by former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher, calls on the next president and Congress to back a new war powers act that would require a commander in chief to consult lawmakers before instigating a conflict expected to last longer than a week—or within three days in case of an emergency. Congress would then have to vote on approving the commitment of forces within 30 days.
If, subsequently, Congress instead voted to disapprove an action but could not override a presidential veto, it could move to block appropriating money to fund a war.
The report represents one of the more practical attempts to deal with the accumulation of presidential power—at Congress's expense—that started with the Cold War and the nuclear age. It actively shuns the deal-breaking big questions that would tip power in either direction on Pennsylvania Avenue: "We do not resolve the ambiguity of the Constitution," says former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton, a commission member. Adds Baker, "What we have designed here is a practical solution to a debate that is not going to be resolved unless the Supreme Court of the United States decides to resolve it or unless we have a constitutional amendment."
The current system is marked by confusion—and de facto disregard for the law. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 was written in the bitter aftermath of escalation and deception by administrations of both parties during the Vietnam War. But its provisions are essentially ignored. No president has ever formally complied with its requirement to report on a conflict in a way that would trigger its time limits on military action. "There was always a feeling that it was unconstitutional," said Edwin Meese, an attorney general in the Reagan years and a commission member.
Yet many in Congress have been reluctant to press their role in deciding on war, even as they score partisan points about putting soldiers in harm's way or incompetent war planning.
Though a constant of recent decades, the lack of clarity over war powers could well shoot back to the fore in times of crisis. The House and Senate are considering hard-hitting resolutions on Iran that critics contend could be cited by the Bush administration as providing legal standing for initiating a war.
The latest effort to bring reform to the war powers question wouldn't block a president from acting, but it would demand that he or she consult—and that Congress take a clear stand—on future wars.
Reader Comments
Presidential War Powers
It is time for a Constitutional amendment specifying clear limits on presidential war powers and the roll of Congress in committing troops to armed conflict. I suggest the following:
"As Commander-In-Chief, the president may order troops into armed conflict only in emergencies. The president must notify Congress within 48 hours of doing so, and troops must be withdrawn within 30 days unless Congress declares war."
Dept of Peace
Wouldn't it be nice if, while they are debating this issue, that some brave soul would recommend that we establish a Dept of Peace which has been advocated by Dennis Kucinich for a number of years?
I believe that it's time to take the advice of the late President Eisenhower's advice concerning the military industrial complex. The Pentagon and the military is one of the most massive wastes of money ever pulled on humankind.
No president should ever be given the powers that this un-elected, unqualified, lying man has seized for himself while a spineless congress stood idly by. It should be carved in stone, that no one person can ever again take this country to war without a thorough review by Congress.
Our military should be used only to defend this country, not to fight & die for the lies of the greedy, corporate, power hungry war mongers.
NEO-MARXIST ORIGIN OF ILLEGAL WAR MAKING
McCain’s ideological support, like Bush’s, comes from Podhoretz Neo-Cons and Leiberman Neo-Libs, not Reagan Conservatives nor Kennedy Liberals. These supporters have the same Neo-Marxist roots, which originated over 60 years ago, when millions of defeated Marxist immigrants from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were admitted by America, as desperate persecuted refugees; after all of the European nations refused to take them.
By the McCarthy Era, many of these pathetic refugees had gotten good government jobs, by studious education and systematic ingratiation with leading men in the government. By way of showing their deep gratitude to the American People, they ideologically corrupted the government and other institutions, and many endangered national security by working as spies for Marxist Russia. The most notorious of these spies, the Rosenbergs, were executed for treason. This had the intended beneficial effect of stopping most of the dangerous spying; but it had the unintended consequence of causing these Marxist refugees to seek social and economic power by pretentiously assimilating into the Conservative Republican and Liberal Democrat parties; where they quickly mutated into the Neo-Conservatives and Neo-Liberals, with insidious ideological opposition to traditional Christian culture and Constitutional principles. The result of the subversive influence by these virulent Crypto-Neo-Marxists in the government, schools, news media and entertainment media was the increasingly intolerably cultural degeneration that has led up to the American Cultural War.
Podhoretz Neo-Con and Leiberman Neo-Lib ideologies notoriously promote contempt for patriotism, defensive war, historical fact, Christian culture, United States Constitution, United Nations, and Conservative Reagan Republicans and Liberal Kennedy Democrats.
With the failure of Marxist ideology, the Neo-Cons opposed the revolutionary spread of Marxism, and now strive to control the deployment of American military power for interventionist warfare everywhere in the World; but the Neo-Libs continue to support Marxist revolutions everywhere. To survive, these Neo-Marxist mutants, Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs, quite readily change from one form into the other, depending patriotic spirit of the times.
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