Radical Avenue

Since the dawn of our nation, we’ve had an unbroken string of Christian white men leading our fighting forces. Turning the role of commander in chief over to a small elected assembly would create leadership opportunities for women and men from all walks of life. Everyone should be represented in decisions about where to send our troops. Voters deserve to see the face of America in their military leadership.

When the presidency shifts from one political party to another, the country’s foreign policy also shifts. Our strategy for use of the military is contained in the national defense policy, as prepared by the executive branch. The current policy, which emphasizes our right to act preemptively, represents a clear departure from precedent. The next president may adopt a different strategy altogether. This inconsistency frustrates our allies and baffles our strategic partners.

Small groups, on the other hand, must govern by consensus. It tends to moderate extreme positions. This would mean fewer radical departures from established principles of engagement and less air time for Washington think tanks promoting misguided military campaigns.

An elected National Defense Council could concentrate on defending the country and leave other presidential duties to the government’s chief executive. The president signs or vetoes all federal laws and the federal budget. The president appoints federal judges, the Supreme Court justices, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the Federal Reserve chairman and all of our ambassadors. Our vast federally owned lands are administered by the president through the Department of the Interior. The president negotiates international treaties on our behalf and oversees a myriad of federal agencies including the IRS, the FBI, the FDA and the EPA. It’s enough to keep the leader of the free world busy.

Commander In Chief, National Defense Policy, Presidential Powers

To many, the Cold War ended when the Berlin wall fell. The collapse of the old Soviet Union left the United States as the world’s lone remaining superpower. Everyone else figures that pins the sheriff’s badge on our chest. Other countries want us to protect the innocent, respond to emergencies and maintain the public order. But they get antsy when they think we’re aiming for “regime change”.

The United States has unleashed, at various times, fire from the sky, guided missiles from the sea and nuclear annihilation. Such an intimidating arsenal magnifies our deployments to the rest of the world. George Washington’s firepower as the American commander in chief pales in comparison to the forces of Armageddon at our current president’s disposal.

The Department of Defense controls more assets than all but a handful of countries. It has its own police force, a court system, hospitals and an engineering corps. Running this extraordinarily powerful organization is a tremendous responsibility. Allowing a politician to use our military as his personal gendarmes is tremendously irresponsible.

Commander In Chief, US Military, Defense Department, Napalm, Tomahawk Cruise Missiles

The aftermath of Vietnam left many scholars with afterthoughts about war and peace in America. Senator Jacob Javits wrote ““Declaring war… is only one part of the Congress’s constitutionally assigned war power. Article 1, Section 8 also instructs Congress to provide for the common defense, to raise and support armies and navies, make rules for the government and regulation of the armed forces and organize and govern militia. When combined with the ‘necessary and proper’ clause, Article 1, Section 8 offers overwhelming evidence that Congress is required by the Constitution to determine whether the United States makes war or remains at peace.

“. . . It is . . . one of the terrible ironies of American history that as war has become more destructive, less humane and less controllable, the power of decision over war has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of one American. This trend of history carries with it a portent of death for millions of human beings in the nuclear age. The American people can reverse this trend by insisting on the reinstatement of representative deliberations over the fearful decision as to war and peace.”

Historian Arthur Schlesinger intoned: “The Founders were determined to deny the American President what Blackstone had assigned to the British King – ‘the sole prerogative of making war and peace.’

“The resistance to giving a ‘single man,’ even if he were President of the United States, the unilateral authority to decide on war pervaded the contemporaneous literature. . . .

“There is no evidence that anyone supposed that his office as Commander in Chief endowed the President with an independent source of authority. . . . The President had no more authority than the first general of the army or the first admiral of the navy would have as professional military men. The President’s power as Commander in Chief, in short, was simply the power to issue orders to the armed forces within a framework established by Congress.”

Louis Fisher has written extensively about Constitutional separation of powers. “President Harry Truman went to war against North Korea in 1950 without asking Congress for authority. Since that time, presidents regularly have used military force by relying on what they regard as independent and self-sufficient sources of authority, especially the commander-in-chief clause. These assertions of political power have no legal foundation…..

“The constitutional balance of power between Congress and the president has not been altered by the UN Charter, mutual security treaties, the threat of nuclear war or other developments of the period since World War II.

“It is hackneyed to argue that contemporary conditions make it necessary to vest in the president the decision to go to war. If the national security risk is great, so is the risk of presidential miscalculation and aggrandizement — all the more reason for insisting military decisions be thoroughly examined and approved by Congress. Contemporary presidential judgments need more, not less scrutiny.”

Not everyone in Congress signed on to the hand wringing “necessary and appropriate” resolution of 2002. Senator Robert Byrd made his objections clear. “Before risking the lives of American troops, all members of Congress … must overcome the siren song of political polls and focus strictly on the merits, not the politics, of this most serious issue.

The resolution before us today is not only a product of haste; it is also a product of presidential hubris. This resolution is breathtaking in its scope. It redefines the nature of defense, and reinterprets the Constitution to suit the will of the Executive Branch. It would give the President blanket authority to launch a unilateral preemptive attack on a sovereign nation that is perceived to be a threat to the United States. This is an unprecedented and unfounded interpretation of the President’s authority under the Constitution…”

Commander in Chief, Declare War

Our European allies respond predictably to requests for support in military adventures. These countries have their own experiences with empire building. In the last century Germany had a leader who used his army to plunder the continent. The results: millions of lives lost, unthinkable horrors and a humanitarian nightmare. The French had a violent 10 year popular revolution and the Napoleonic wars. What do these unfortunate episodes have in common other than bloodshed? …too much power in the hands of one man.

The British and Roman empires seem more amusing than threatening at this point. They’re like storm clouds disappearing behind us in the rear view mirror. Despite the silly period costumes, these regimes had plenty of despotism as well. Our founding fathers obsession with checks and balances was no accident.

European Allies, Commander in Chief

George W. Bush apparently believes that as president, he has the right to declare war. On December 31, 2002, in response to a reporter’s question about a “possible war with Iraq” and other foreign policy concerns, the president retorted, “You said we’re headed to war in Iraq… I don’t know why you say that. I hope we’re not headed to war in Iraq. I’m the person who gets to decide, not you.” When we entered Iraq in 2003, it was without UN or NATO support.

Congress did not declare war on Iraq, perhaps because Iraq has never attacked the United States and posed no immediate threat to us prior to our invasion. Instead Congress passed a resolution giving the president authority “to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.” It stands as the most complete abdication of Congressional Constitutional responsibility since the 1964 Tonkin Gulf resolution. We’re fortunate the Supreme Court hasn’t asked the president to serve as Chief Justice.

President Bush has appointed a war czar to oversee the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since when does the president declare war and leave the prosecution of that war to others? It’s hard to imagine the “first General” described by Alexander Hamilton handing leadership responsibilities over to subordinates.

The United States has troops in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Djibouti, Egypt, Finland, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Peru, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Togo, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe. Our Navy fleet owns the high seas. Our Air Force patrols the sky. We’re even in outer space.

In the middle of summer we celebrate the day our founders declared their independence from a distant, isolated monarchy. Seasons change. Our country has been transformed into the modern day equivalent of that kingdom we rejected in 1776. The sun never sets on the United States Empire.

troop deployments, Commander in Chief, war, Iraq, George W. Bush

The 1992 Somalia incursion provided temporary support for a UN humanitarian mission. The United States has never declared war on Somalia and Somalia has never declared war on us. Nevertheless we soon found ourselves taking sides in a ghastly civil war. President Clinton withdrew the troops after the black hawk down debacle of 1993.

A year later, Clinton sent 2,000 soldiers into Haiti, once again in support of the UN. In response to this action, Congress passed a sense of Congress resolution indicating the president should have sought Congressional approval before deploying US forces to Haiti. It did not provoke a Constitutional crisis.

The formerly communist Yugoslavia began a decade long political meltdown in 1990. Carnage ensued as Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo all broke away from what is now Serbia and Montenegro. The Air Force bombed Serbia for 3 months, this time as part of a NATO engagement. Many in Congress disagreed with Mr. Clinton’s decision to get involved, but our soldiers remain in the former Yugoslav republics to this day.

In the popular 1997 movie “Wag the Dog”, a fictional president used overseas military entanglements to distract the country from a personal scandal. Power corrupts politicians and presidents have the power. The country always rallies round the commander in chief in times of war.

Somalia, Bill Clinton, Haiti, Commander in Chief

In the 1990’s, presidents used multinational organizations to help justify foreign invasions. The first Persian Gulf War was approved by the United Nations Security Council. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization runs the Kosovo operation.

After our troops drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, President Bush stated the reason for not then toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime: “We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well… Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different–and perhaps barren–outcome.”

During the last weeks of his presidency, George Bush Sr. sent 25,000 troops into Somalia. Unfortunately, the Constitution does not account for this type of passive offensive. In war, soldiers are mobilized to defeat an opposing force, to take and control real estate. Actually, the US military has always excelled at this. But when we ask our soldiers to establish political institutions or police a foreign country for years on end, we lose our way. Diplomacy is for politicians.

Commander In Chief, Gulf War

In 1788 Patrick Henry complained of the newly forming United States government: “It squints towards monarchy”. Today we have a monarchy in plain view. Our military has suffered casualties on foreign soil under every commander in chief since the 1930’s. We lost servicemen in Iran during the Carter administration, this time as part of a failed covert rescue operation. Apparently the 1979 siege of our embassy in Tehran caught the CIA off guard.

Over 200 Marines were killed in their barracks during a 1982 peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. Shortly thereafter, President Reagan ordered an invasion of Grenada, a tiny country in the Caribbean. Our covert operatives then got involved in a Nicaraguan civil war, and that conflict spilled over into El Salvador and Honduras. Congress debated the matter before trying to limit American military involvement in the region. But the Boland Amendment to the defense appropriations bill of 1982 had a limited impact on our Central American activities. Reagan also ordered air strikes on Libya in 1986 without congressional approval.

George H.W. Bush claimed to be protecting American lives when he launched an invasion of Panama in 1989. General Manuel Noriega, the former leader of the Panamanian military, ended up in a Miami jail after having been on the CIA payroll for decades. Congress seemingly had no say in the matter. Then again, our armed forces have been deployed in Panama since the turn of the last century.

Commander In Chief, Panama, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush