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How far will Congress go in abdicating its role in making war?

ASK THIS | May 18, 2011

Two Yale professors urge reporters to ask members of Congress why they think it's OK for Obama not to seek their approval for the ongoing military action in Libya.


Yale professors Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway write in a Washington Post op-ed on Wednesday that "the War Powers Act confronts its moment of truth" on Friday, which will mark the 60th day since President Obama formally notified Congress of his military intervention in Libya.
 
But the president isn't expected to ask Congress to approve anything before then – and Congress is acquiescing.
 
Ackerman and Hathaway write that Obama's chosen course is "to paper over the problem with new legal fictions pretending that the time limit doesn’t apply to this instance. By Friday, the administration’s legal team is likely to announce that the clock stopped ticking on April 1 --  the date when NATO 'took the lead' in the bombing campaign. Since NATO is running the show, the argument will go, the War Powers Act no longer applies, and the president doesn’t have to go back to Congress after all.
 
"But American planes and drones continued their bombing long after the April turnover -- and the drones are still flying over Libya," they write.
 
"If nothing happens," they conclude, "history will say that the War Powers Act was condemned to a quiet death by a president who had solemnly pledged, on the campaign trail, to put an end to indiscriminate warmaking."
 
The New York Times noted last week: "While many presidents of both parties have deployed forces into hostilities without prior Congressional permission, there is far less precedent for defying the section of the War Powers Resolution that imposes the 60-day deadline on hostilities."
 
The Nieman Watchdog Project asked Ackerman, a law professor, and Hathaway, a political science professor, what questions reporters should be asking members of Congress. Here are their suggestions:
 
Q. When the Administration commenced the bombing campaign, it said that it would last “days, not weeks.” And yet we are now hearing that it may last months or perhaps years. Wasn't the War Powers Act intended to put an end to this kind of presidential mission-creep by requiring congressional consent to on-going military operations?
 
Q. The War Powers Resolution's sixty day limit on unilateral presidential action applies to “hostilities” , not just “wars.” See sec. 2(a). Isn't the US a crucial participant in NATO's acts of “hostility” against Libya? If the US stopped its support operations, wouldn't the entire bombing campaign come to an end at once?
 
Q. Admiral James G. Stavridis, NATO's Supreme Commander, is in ultimate control of the Libyan campaign. He is also Commander of US forces in Europe and under direct command and control by the Pentagon. Even if we stopped flying military drones before the sixty-day time limit expires, doesn't the War Powers Resolution continue to apply since Stavridis' involvement means that an active-duty American officer is in ultimate command of the NATO campaign?
 
Q. The Pentagon has already spent about three-quarters of a billion dollars on the Libya campaign out of its general appropriations. Aren't you worried that Congress's power of the purse is no longer effective when the President can pay three-quarters of a billion dollars for a war without ever going to Congress for approval? Isn't it about time for the Administration to request a special appropriation for its on-going support operations in Libya?
 

 



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