When the US initially started providing military support for Libyan rebels, I supported his right to do so under the War Powers Act of 1973. However, the time allotted to continue military operations have since expired, and Obama has failed in his obligation. I have no doubt that he believes he is doing what’s right. However, he does not have the right to disobey the law. No President does. Dennis Kucinich was right to introduce the Libya Resolution. As much as Republicans have complained about Obama taking action without congressional approval, they were afraid Kucinich’s resolution might pass, so they blocked it.
Open Congress catches a Fox Nutwork report that should raise some eyebrows:
The House was scheduled to vote this afternoon on a privileged resolution from Rep. Dennis Kucinich [D, OH-10] directing the President, pursuant to the War Powers Act, to remove U.S. armed forces from Libya. But the House leadership has pulled it from the floor because, according to Republican aides who spoke with Fox News [Murdock delinked], “it became clear that it might succeed.”
“[Republican leaders] hadn’t seen much of a threat from [the Kucinich bill]. He’s kind of this marginal figure and having his resolution go down narrowly would be no big deal and might even send a message to the administration,” said one of the Republican aides. “But once they saw that there was substantial support, they were like, ‘Whoa.’”
This has been a long-running problem with the War Powers Resolution. Congress has long been afraid to test its constitutional validity, lest they find out they don’t have the powers they thought they did. Likewise, presidential administrations have feared finding out they don’t have the powers they thought they did. And so the War Powers Resolution has lived in this uncertain gray zone ever since, "surviving" perhaps only because everyone was worried what they’d find if they poked it to see if it was really still alive (or ever was)… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Daily Kos>l
Leaving the War Powers Act on the books without enforcing it is not acceptable. To continue operations in Libya, Obama must obtain authorization from Congress.
8 Responses to “Republicans Duck Libya Resolution”
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Obama must stop all active military operations not directly concerned with our own safety right now. Period. Enough of the poor and middle class have died already. do we need or want another 58,000 American children dead body count. FTW let them handle their own shit. If the R’s won’t fund aid to Americans than i sure as hell can’t justify non humanitarian aid to Israel or anywhere else.
You make a valid point, Mark.
I agree he must obtain permission from Congress – even Boner said so the other day, so I don’t understand why they didn’t pass Kucinich’s bill. They are so weird and unpredictable that it’s not even funny. 🙄
The intervention over Libya has polled well and is popular. Plus extending war is a Republican knee-jerk.
There is nothing funny in this situation-
You’re so right!
The purported “unconstitutionality” of the War Powers Act is a totally bogus legal argument. As a former professor of constitutional law and a long-time federal-court litigator of constitutional issues, I know there is no substantial legal basis for the argument that Congress lacked constitutional authority to enact the War Powers Act (which it did by 2/3 votes of both houses when it overrode President Nixon’s veto). In 1980 the Attorney General of the US issued an opinion upholding the constitutionality of the War Powers Act, and that opinion has never been withdrawn or refuted. The “plain language” (our Supreme Court’s primary rule of interpreting legislative acts) of the Constitution is that Article I gives Congress the exclusive power “to declare war,” and Article II gives the President as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces the exclusive power to command the armed forces. The power to command the armed forces is obviously not the power to decide whether or not those forces should be committed to “war” — a decision which Article I plainly entrusts to Congress. If the “plain language” of the Constitution were not sufficiently clear to decide the issue, then resort to the “legislative history” (proceedings in the constitutional convention held by our Founding Fathers) of the Constitution shows overwhelmingly that our Founding Fathers intended to place the decision whether or not to go to war in the hands of Congress, and not to the President. I defy anyone to produce any substantial legal support for the proposition that Congress lacked the constitutional authority to enact the War Powers Act. Simply saying “the Act is unconstitutional” does not make it so. The real reason for timidity on the part of Congress is not an informed judgment that the constitutionality of the Act, but rather that most members of Congress would rather violate their oaths “to uphold and defend the Constitution” than be politically vulnerable to charges that they “won’t back our troops” or that they are otherwise “unpatriotic” if they won’t back a war that our President is waging.
Welcome Richard. 🙂
Like you, I also thing the War Powers Act is Constitutional and hope you didn’t think I was arguing to the contrary. I agree with your excellent analysis. My point was that Obama is outside the law, and Republican are evading their responsibility.