Posted on 02/14/2015 6:08:59 PM PST by Kaslin
On Wednesday, President Obama proposed for Congress’s consideration an authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) against the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL). The jihadists are already being fought — albeit not nearly vigorously enough — under existing AUMFs. So Obama’s proposal, which would gratuitously repeal one of the prior AUMFs, is unnecessary. It is, in addition, so pathetic a concoction of lawlessness and aimlessness that, in a healthier political climate, Congress would not give it the time of day.
The document defies the reality of war. Phrased as a license for the “limited” use of force, it suggests that lawmakers should delegitimize combat even as they authorize it. The president would have Congress limit the duration of combat (to three years), as if war came with an end-date. He’d have Congress limit the means of combat (no ground forces), as if war could be scripted to suit the Left’s anti-war sensibilities.
But, for a moment, let’s put aside the reality of the long war. Obama’s proposal could not even deal with the reality of Wednesday. Just as Congress received it, Obama’s new defense secretary was conceding that the president’s retreat from Afghanistan would have to be postponed because of Taliban advances; while in Yemen — that Obama-touted counterterrorism “success” story — Iran-backed jihadists seized the U.S. embassy after American diplomatic and military officials were forced to flee.
In fact, less than 24 hours after Obama suggested that Congress should forbid him from using ground troops against Islamic State terrorists, Islamic State terrorists were busy capturing a western Iraqi town just 13 minutes away from the base where 320 U.S. Marines are on the ground, training hapless Iraqi forces. Forget ground forces to defeat ISIS; the way Obama is managing things, we may need ground forces just to rescue our ground forces.
Still, it is not enough to say that in a time of real peril we have a president whose delusions are as impenetrable as they are dangerous. The proposed AUMF would continue Obama’s fundamental transformation of America by upending the Constitution’s national-defense framework.
The American Revolution succeeded against long odds, and the Framers knew that America’s survival was no sure thing. Powerful European nations remained an existential threat; along the Maghreb, radical Islam besieged American shipping, so vital to commerce. Confronting the reality of this dangerous world, the Framers vested all executive power — explicitly including commander-in-chief power over the armed forces — in a single official, the president.
The Framers were leery of a too-powerful presidency. They considered alternative models: variations on a parliamentary system that would conjoin executive and legislative powers, or the possibility of dividing executive power among ministers and privy councils. Ultimately, however, they settled on a single executive, for three reasons.
First, a unitary president could act with dispatch, in a way a committee-type arrangement could not. If the nation were threatened, a president could bring all necessary power to bear instantly.
Second, though the presidency had to be formidable to fulfill its national-security mandate, it could be checked in war-fighting just as it was checked in the domestic sphere: by making sure executive and legislative powers were kept separate. The latter were denied to the president: Only Congress has the power to declare war (which formally invokes the law of armed conflict that governs relations between belligerent nations), and only Congress can appropriate the public funds necessary to sustain military campaigns. But Congress was denied any executive power: Only the president is authorized to make command decisions, including those regarding deployment of the armed forces.
Third, accountability was key. A president was far more likely to make reckless decisions if he knew he could shift the blame for them to Congress, a defense minister, or a privy council. The great trust reposed in the chief executive — and a president has no greater duty than national defense — would be exercised more responsibly and with due urgency if the buck stopped at his desk alone.
In our constitutional system, therefore, Congress is not permitted to command the armed forces. It has no more power to direct the president to deploy or not deploy ground forces than it does to tell the president to “take that hill” or capture this enemy combatant.
Congress has the power to authorize the use of force. It can cut off funding or repeal its authorization of force if the objectives of the war have been achieved or if the president is derelict in prosecuting the war. But the Constitution does not authorize Congress to tell the president and his subordinate military commanders that land, sea, or air power is off the table. If a threat to national interests is serious enough, it is Congress’s job to authorize a war. It is then the president’s job to fight it, using whatever military assets are appropriate, in his judgment, to meet war’s unpredictable twists and turns.
I emphasize the president’s judgment because exercising it is precisely what being commander-in-chief entails. The president, a civilian, does not drive the tanks; but as commander, he does decide whether the tanks are necessary. In authorizing the use of force, Congress cannot require the president to deploy ground forces. Indeed, Congress is powerless to require the president to dispatch any forces whatsoever.
Obama just wants to invade Iraq and steal their oil!
Obama is a lawsuit foodstamp abuse president.
He is suing America to do things for him. It is not about being President but being entitled.
Will Congress drink the kool aid he is asking them to drink for him?
Will America take the final poison?
He doesn’t need this POS head fake AUMF.
It’s definitions severely restrict what he is able to do and give him an out, if it is approved, to come back and say he is bound by the terms of the AUMF.
He has much broader lattitude with the current Use of Force, authorized in 2003, giving the USA Military by order of the President to go virtually anywhere and Obama should.
Do Not give him a new AUMF, which is a political tool.
My guess is they want to repeal the blanket AUMF of Sep 2001 that pretty much gave any president authority to fight anyone anywhere if connected in any way to the terrorist organization that perpetrated 9/11.
Obama wants future presidents stymied after he leaves office.
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