Re-evaluating our governement

A hidden benefit, from the disruption we are experiencing in the “normalcy” of how the White House conducts business, is we are re-evaluating our government. Specifically, there are rumblings that Congress is finally willing to consider the liberties Presidents Bush, Obama, and, now, Trump, have taken with the post-9/11 war power authorizations.

In the wake of 9/11, Congress passed sweeping legislation granting President Bush unparalleled authority to use military force and pry into our privacy. The target was Al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan. In 2002, a second set of legislation authorized President Bush to take down Saddam Hussein in Iraq. He’s gone now, but we still have armed forces in Iraq; Afghanistan is a war theater without end; while, we appear to be mopping up the remnants of ISIS in Western Iraq and Syria. All of this from legislation more than 15 years old. One of the criticisms of President Obama is that he waffled on use of force in Syria. He set a “red line,” Syria crossed it by using chemical weapons in hostilities, and he backed off. He also talked about asking for congressional authority to commit U.S. forces against Syria and ISIS, and, then, retreated when it appeared Congress had no stomach to debate an expansion of post-9/11 authority.

Because of the partisanship ripping us apart, attention focused on President Obama’s perceived weakness and Republican’s disloyalty to a president at war. What was really at issue, though, was an under reported, constitutional crisis. Had President Obama acted “solo” and taken us to war against Syria, he would have redefined the breadth of a President’s war-making authority. Congress needs to speak first, as it should have done even as we have been beating back ISIS. The will of the people must always come before the powers of a president.

During the Obama administration, the war-making authority of the presidency was stretched by the use of armed drones and special forces. America killed foreigners, on foreign soil, often without notice to the host country, ignoring the normal lines of sovereignty. We committed state-sanctioned assassinations without Congressional assent. This legacy recently played out in Niger. Western Africa and Libya are terrorists havens. Al Qaeda off-shots, ISIS training grounds and evil actors like Boko Haram threaten all decency locally and world wide. Eliminating these enemies of our values is laudable; functionally, how we have been doing it, maybe not so much.

Lost, in the reality TV of whether or not a Gold Star family was treated shabbily by President Trump is the fact that American troops were involved in an aggressive campaign in Niger against terrorists. None of this was, apparently, known to Congress. In other words, we may be involved in a covert “hot” war in Western Africa without Congressional authorization.

This defiles the Constitution. Congress is explicitly vested with the sole twin powers to declare war and fund our military. A president is “merely” a Commander in Chief and can only use force when necessary or as directed by Congress. In theory, then, Congress holds both the pen and the purse strings to the military, protecting us from the whims of an “Imperial President.”

Early in our history, presidents routinely sought some sort of authorization from Congress before putting troops in harm’s way. In the wake of the American Revolution, the former colonies were faced with mortal threats from European imperialist powers, American-Indian Nations and Barbary Pirates. Successive presidents, from Adams through Monroe, sought Congressional authorization before committing forces to fight these powerful enemies of American expansionism.

As our nation matured, presidents increasingly took a more muscular view of their role as Commander-in-Chief. President Andrew Jackson’s undeclared war against Native Americans, as an adjunct of the Indian Removal Act (1830) was probably the genesis of this new view of presidential power. By the time we get to Abraham Lincoln’s command of Union forces in the Civil War, Congress was becoming an after-thought. While Fort Sumter was attacked, President Lincoln was never authorized by Congress to wage war against fellow Americans. Modern presidents have been further “liberated” from Congress by the existence of treaties and the creation of the United Nations. The Korean War, Bosnian War, Haitian peace-keeping and even President Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya were all made under the umbrella “political cover” of UN authorizations. In fact, the last time Congress formally declared war was in World War II.

Yet, even as our presidency became increasingly “imperial,” in response to the open wound that was the Vietnam quagmire, Congress passed the “War Powers Act” to clip presidential authority and innoculate us against “another Vietnam.” In doing so, Congress told future presidents, before our military forces could be put in “imminent involvement in hostilities,” there had to be a declaration of war, specific authority, or an emergency. In recent times, the War Powers Act was triggered in our actions in the Middle East (Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq) all sanctioned both internationally and by Congress.

This brings us back to what is going on in Western Africa, Syria and even Afghanistan. American troops and hardware are in action at the behest of our president. We do not know what the battle plan is or how long a commitment is needed. This may be good policy or bad policy, but it is definitely a policy on which Congress has not spoken. This is not how our Founding Fathers envisioned our country operating. Hence, this is a good time to step back and let Congress do its job, failing that, we are in danger (and this is not a partisan complaint) of the presidency running constitutionally amok.

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