Ignoring the War Powers Act

By Jules Witcover

Congress very belatedly has begun to raise its feeble voice in defense of its Constitutional powers on war. Two senators, Democrat Jim Webb of Virginia and Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee, have introduced a resolution calling on President Obama to comply with the War Powers Act of 1973 regarding the U.S. military involvement in Libya.

The act requires that the president in taking any military action notify Congress and end it within 60 days unless authorized by Congress to continue. The deadline passed on May 20 with no such administration compliance or congressional approval for the military engagement to go on.

The Webb and Corker resolution follows a House resolution last week demanding that the president provide "a compelling rationale" for continuing the use of force against the regime of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Actually, the House Republicans were prodded by another demand sponsored by anti-war Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio to stop the Libya action in 15 days, which failed but garnered 87 Republican votes.

The explicit congressional power to declare war has not been invoked since the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, including for the Vietnam War or any of the military engagements in the Middle East since then. Congress passed the War Powers Act in 1973 as a partial way to restore a congressional role in initiating military hostilities, but presidents have routinely sloughed it off, paying lip service to it at best.

The Obama administration continues to insist it has "acted in accordance" with the act and has "consulted" with Congress on the limited American role in the UN-sanctioned response to Gadhafi's repression of the rebellion against him. But it ignored the 60-day deadline, flirting with a congressional defunding, as finally occurred toward the end of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The Pentagon has criticized congressional complaints as sending "an unhelpful message of disunity and uncertainty to our troops, our allies and most important the Gaddafi regime." But Webb, a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, said his resolution raises "whether a president, any president, can unilaterally begin and continue a military campaign for reasons that he alone has defined as meeting the demanding standards of a vital national security interest worthy of risking American lives and expending billions of dollars of our taxpayers' money." He asked: "What was the standard in this case?"

Corker, noting that the 60-day deadline had passed with no further justification for continuing what Obama has called a limited response to attacks on the Libyan people, said, "Neither the Congress nor the American people have any clearer view of the administration's stated mission or endgame for our military involvement in Libya."

One of the most influential voices in the Senate on foreign policy, Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote recently in The Washington Post that the administration should "seek the requisite debate and authorization (in Congress) for the use of military force. ... The White House called the [House] vote 'unnecessary and unhelpful,' but it has only itself to blame. The administration faces bipartisan opposition in Congress because it has, for more than two months, sidestepped the clear constitutional and legislative intent that a president obtain congressional authorization to go to war."

Lugar also opposes administration support for a nonbinding Senate resolution approving the limited Libya involvement, calling it an "illustration of the president's go-it-alone attitude" seeking to "set a dangerous precedent." It would, he said, "have no force of law and would not have to be passed by the House. Nonetheless, it would be touted by the administration as evidence of congressional approval for the war."

What we are beginning to see now is a rehash of the argument launched in 2003 with George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq without explicit congressional authorization. Obama has sought to separate himself from Bush's radical and aggressive foreign policy, signing on in Libya only to a limited involvement through collective action with substantive allies. But he has put himself on the same slippery slope of military engagement that is Bush's negative legacy, and could become his as well, intentionally or not.

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