Posted on 10/08/2019 5:07:05 AM PDT by gattaca
Congress abdicated its foreign policy responsibilities long before Donald Trump became president
If you want to stop Donald Trump from making unilateral decisions regarding war and peace, then stop letting all presidents make unilateral decisions about war and peace. It’s really quite simple. Trump can abruptly pull back U.S. troops from northern Syria because Congress, having abdicated its foreign policy responsibilities long ago, has no leverage to stop him.
When Congress passed the War Powers Resolution as the Vietnam War was winding down, it gave presidents the power to send troops abroad for 60 days in response to any “national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” If the president failed to gain congressional support for the deployment, he would have another 30 days to pull back troops.
Congress is the institution vested with the power to declare wars, to debate where we send troops, and decide which conflicts are funded. Presidents have been ignoring this arrangement, abuse authorizations for the use of military force (AUMFs), and imbue themselves with the power to engage in conflicts wherever they like, without any coherent endgame, and without any buy-in from Congress.
Congress, in turn, has shown no interest in genuinely challenging executive power, because its members are far more concerned with political self-preservation. Ignoring abuse shields them from tough choices and ensuing criticism—even as they use war as a partisan cudgel.
Even if you don’t believe all these conflicts rise to an Article I declaration, and I don’t, the more accountability there is in foreign entanglements the better. Right now we have little genuine debate or consensus building—in a nation that already exhibits exceptionally little interest in foreign policy—regarding the deployment of our troops, almost always in perpetuity, around the world.
It’s a bipartisan problem. Barack Obama, whose political star rose due to his opposition to the Iraq war, was perhaps our worst offender, circumventing Congress and relying on a decade-old AUMF, which he invoked 19 times during his presidency, to justify a half-hearted intervention against ISIS (not al-Qaeda) in Syria (not Afghanistan.)
Trump could bomb Iran tomorrow, use Obama’s reasoning, and have a far stronger legal defense for his actions.
It was also Obama who joined Europeans in the failed intervention in Libya, where he worked under NATO goals rather than the United States law. There was hardly a peep from Democrats fretting over the corrosion of the Constitution.
Republicans too were given ample chance to sign-off on Syrian intervention in 2013 when Obama, fully aware of congressional aversion to accountability, asked for a new AUMF to get out of bombing Assad. It would have been a great time for senators to dictate long-term goals in Syria. It’s not too late. If they believe Trump’s strategy is wrong, they can still force his hand by explaining the mission with a new AUMF. Let’s see if voters agree.
Right now, I imagine only a sliver of Americans fully understand the situation in Syria. I’m definitely not one of them. Yes, Trump’s haphazard abandonment of Syrian Kurds and empowering of Turkey seems like a bad idea for a bunch of reasons. I’m hawkish about destroying the remnants of JV-team ISIS and sympathetic towards the idea of protecting civilians from Assad’s chemical attacks and shielding the Kurds from Turkish aggression. But now we’re talking about an open-ended military commitment that keeps evolving. And anyone who claims with any certitude to know how these events will shake out is just lying to you.
The only thing we can be certain of is that there few good options in the Syria mess, and that includes our allies. Although the Kurds have endured much as a people, and deserve our support, the Kurdish PKK, our allies in northern Syria, aren’t chaste freedom fighters but Maoists with ties to terrorist organizations.
Or, in other words, we face few good options mired in perhaps the most volatile situation in the world. Under these conditions, our foreign policy shouldn’t be driven by the arbitrary “great and unmatched wisdom” of any single person. This brand of unilateral power was problematic when the well-mannered Obama sold out Syria to coddle the Iranian terror state, and it’s problematic when an impulsive Trump acquiesces to the wishes of Erdogan. (Although Washington only seems to freak out when the word “withdrawal” is mentioned.)
Whoever is president, the founders clearly foresaw Congress taking far more responsibility for conflicts we enter. So who knows, maybe next intervention it will?
Congress is there to enrich itself. They have no interest in governance.
Is congress going to declare war on Syria? Or on our NATO “ally”, Turkey? Can’t wait to see that debate.
Turkey has given the US a gateway to invade Iraq twice in the past 30 years. Our 150-1000 US troops in Syria are no longer a deterrent to Turkey , which has taken in millions of refugees, from cleaning out its border
I’m not interested in Congress having control or power over anything.
If these two bit intellectuals like Romney, Graham, Cruz and McConnell et al, are soooooooo upset with Trump for pulling a hand full of remaining US Troops from harms way, then SUBMIT SOMJE LEGISLATION FOR A VOTE TO SEND THE TROOPS BACK IN THERE.
I heard that the neocons have done all this whining over 1,000 troops!
Sadly. That’s all the Republicans in Congress do anymore is talk.
The other angle to this is that U.S. military campaigns have nothing to do with our national interests. The campaigns are waged simply to benefit foreign interests that lobby bribe U.S. politicians.
That is a perfectly balanced, and Constitutionally correct, way to go to war.
Congress DIRECTS the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy raised BY Congress to go to war, and Congress PLEDGES full support.
Do it that way, and victory is possible. Do it half-assed, and victory is not possible.
Fixed it.
I HEARD THAT THE TOTAL NUMBER OF REMAINING US TROOPS IN SYRIA WAS ONLY 50 PEOPLE
DOES ANYONE KNOW IF THAT IS TRUE?
As of a year or two ago, there were about 2,000 US military in Syria. But there is no way to know if the Obama-McCain military is truthful to the public or even to the president.
I agree, but who, exactly, are we declaring war upon? Syria? Turkey? “Some” of the Kurds, but not some of the others?
Congress, in turn, has shown no interest in genuinely challenging executive power, because its members are far more concerned with political self-preservation. Ignoring abuse shields them from tough choices and ensuing criticism—even as they use war as a partisan cudgel.
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It’s inevitable. It’s human nature. We follow the same trajectory as the old Roman Republic; with a Congress devolving into nothing more than pompous preening peacocks. They all want power without responsibility.
Congress loves to spout off about war and peace without having to take accountability either way by attaching their name and vote to the consequences.
There are no declarations anymore because Presidents stopped asking congress to declare war.
Wrong, chris. Congress SHOULD be fully invested in any war discussion. (I don’t trust the peckerheads either but follow along.)
Congress has the sole power of declaring war and they should exercise it. No “quickie” invasions or bombing missions. Either declare or step aside. By the same token, Congress should write laws and not just establish new “agencies” that will haunt us with their rules forever.
Either way ... fight or run ... we get to decide whether the clowns got it right or screwed things up. Come election time, we get to weed out the losers. They answer to us and I want MORE things to hold them accountable for.
A State is the only other power that can get into ‘war’. States have failed to protect their borders from invasion, which they are empowered to do.
Ideally, yes, but in practice the thing doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work at all.
The body has proven itself to be both useless and evil.
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