Posted by
Bill Crawford on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 10:10:38 PM
Obama is getting a trimming from two sides this week on his adventures in Libya. While he probably will skate on both counts, I would like to see this issue come to a head, once and for all- but not for the reasons you would think.
The more pesky effort is the one led by the House stalwart of Constitutional reason, Dennis Kucinich. You know, the guy that presided over the Cayahoga River going on fire when he was the post-adolescent Mayor of Cleveland in the late '70's.
At least he is consistent with this. He fought with W. over his efforts in Iraq with the War Powers Act, and it went nowhere, mostly because of all the people in his Party that authorized force there after 9/11. The likelihood that a lawsuit will produce anything here is infinitesmal, being that it is brought by a group of elected federalk officials against other elected federal officials.
Speaker Boehner has given Obama a deadline this weekend to either can the Libya thing or formally go to Congreget establishess for authrorization. My money is on Obama ignoring this and daring them to pull the funding. The White House position is that this is NATO's war, and we are only providing support.
That's the small stuff. I just wish the Act itself would establish itself in practice, one way or another. I am not a fan of the Act, I think it impedes on the ability of the Executive branch to properly deal with the world in real time.
We have been all dancing on this point ever since Congress passed it under Nixon. It would have been a flashpoint between the Republican Congress and Truman over Korea, if it existed in 1950. We all survived atrociously handled wars like Vietnam despite it.
There will always be a tug of war going on between a Congress that holds exclusive power to declare war and a President that has exclusive power to manage it. Stop using the War Powers Act as a debate point, and follow it- or dump it.
There is another potential upside to it all. I have yet to understand exactly why we are in Afghanistan, much less Libya. The latter seems to be a byproduct of an especially inane U.N. concept that crept up recently- "R2P" (Responsibility To Protect). I relish any effort that forces Obama to stand up and elucidate on his reasons for this.