thedrifter
07-23-07, 06:27 AM
Different presidents. Different wars. Same battle.
By DALE EISMAN, The Virginian-Pilot
© July 23, 2007
Last updated: 1:46 AM
WASHINGTON
A beleaguered president, his popularity sinking as American troops fight and die in a confusing, faraway, stalemated war, faces a restive Congress, its leaders determined to force him into a new strategy.
George W. Bush in 2007, right?
The description also can be applied to Richard Nixon in 1970 and Harry Truman in 1951 - among others. The debate between Bush and Democratic senators that played out in the Capitol last week is the latest in a long series of struggles over the limits of presidential and congressional power in wartime, according to historians.
"This jousting between the president and Congress is what our nation has always been about," said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University historian who specializes in Congress.
Historians say there's hardly an argument over Congress' authority
to cut off money needed to support military actions of which it disapproves. Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky repeatedly invited Democrats to follow that route last week as they tried to push Bush into a new strategy for the Iraq war.
McConnell found no takers because lawmakers are rarely willing to take the heat that goes with any vote to interrupt the flow of supplies to troops under fire.
Instead, Senate Democrats followed a precedent set by other modern Congresses by trying to write war policies without cutting off funding.
The constitutional principle that the commander in chief has "authority to run the war and the Congress has power to declare the war (was) pretty much how it was done until you get to the later part of the 20th century," said Paul Milazzo, an Ohio University historian.
Beginning with the Korean War, the first in a series of conflicts that were never formally declared, Congress has become increasingly assertive about its power to manage military action.
In 1951, as setbacks on the battlefield in Korea and his unpopular decision to relieve Gen. Douglas MacArthur of command there left President Truman isolated, Congress blocked the deployment of any troops who had not had at least 120 days of military training.
"A lot of hostility had set in " toward Truman, said Randy Sowell, an archivist at the Truman Library in Independence, Mo. Sensitive to charges that the administration had sent raw recruits off to war, Congress passed the 120-day requirement and the president went along.
Bush, who reportedly views Truman's resolute leadership in Korea as a model for his determination to stay the course in Iraq, has been far less accommodating in similar challenges on Capitol Hill.
When Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., tried this month to impose a requirement that troops get longer breaks between deployments to Iraq, Bush sent word that he'd veto it and Senate Republicans used procedural rules to kill it - for now. Some complained that the deployment restriction would impinge on Bush's constitutional prerogatives as the military's commander in chief.
Bush also threatened to veto other Democratic proposals, including one that kept the Senate in session last week for a rare, all-night debate. That proposal demanded that the president begin to remove and reposition troops in Iraq within 120 days.
"None of us are interested in dictating military strategy to the president," Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, a Democratic presidential candidate, sai d shortly before his GOP colleagues succeeded in blocking the proposal.
Republicans charged that dictating strategy is precisely what Democrats were attempting. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Wyo., said he is "always surprised" when Congress tries to transform itself into a military "command center."
But even if the Democratic effort had succeeded, history and the language of the plan itself suggests Bush could have found ways to run the war as he wishes.
"There was nothing in that amendment that said this was going to be a dramatic drawdown," said Webb, who supported it but admitted to reservations in doing so. The draft called on Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq but set no limit on the number of troops he could keep there, Webb said.
Other presidents have ignored the law or found ways to skirt it when Congress tried to dictate military movements.
After Congress in 1970 repealed the resolution that had given President Lyndon Johnson authority to wage the Vietnam War, his successor, Nixon, took more than two years to close out the conflict. Even then, the war ended for the United States not because of Congress but because Nixon negotiated a treaty with the North Vietnamese.
Gerald Ford, who followed Nixon to the White House, was equally undeterred in 1975, when Cambodia's navy seized the Mayaguez, a U.S. freighter. Despite a law barring the use of U.S. ground troops in Cambodia, Ford sent Marines to rescue the ship's crew.
"It is my constitutional responsibility to command the forces and to protect Americans," Ford told a group of lawmakers who challenged his action.
Dale Eisman, (703) 913-9872, dale.eisman@pilotonline.com
Ellie
By DALE EISMAN, The Virginian-Pilot
© July 23, 2007
Last updated: 1:46 AM
WASHINGTON
A beleaguered president, his popularity sinking as American troops fight and die in a confusing, faraway, stalemated war, faces a restive Congress, its leaders determined to force him into a new strategy.
George W. Bush in 2007, right?
The description also can be applied to Richard Nixon in 1970 and Harry Truman in 1951 - among others. The debate between Bush and Democratic senators that played out in the Capitol last week is the latest in a long series of struggles over the limits of presidential and congressional power in wartime, according to historians.
"This jousting between the president and Congress is what our nation has always been about," said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University historian who specializes in Congress.
Historians say there's hardly an argument over Congress' authority
to cut off money needed to support military actions of which it disapproves. Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky repeatedly invited Democrats to follow that route last week as they tried to push Bush into a new strategy for the Iraq war.
McConnell found no takers because lawmakers are rarely willing to take the heat that goes with any vote to interrupt the flow of supplies to troops under fire.
Instead, Senate Democrats followed a precedent set by other modern Congresses by trying to write war policies without cutting off funding.
The constitutional principle that the commander in chief has "authority to run the war and the Congress has power to declare the war (was) pretty much how it was done until you get to the later part of the 20th century," said Paul Milazzo, an Ohio University historian.
Beginning with the Korean War, the first in a series of conflicts that were never formally declared, Congress has become increasingly assertive about its power to manage military action.
In 1951, as setbacks on the battlefield in Korea and his unpopular decision to relieve Gen. Douglas MacArthur of command there left President Truman isolated, Congress blocked the deployment of any troops who had not had at least 120 days of military training.
"A lot of hostility had set in " toward Truman, said Randy Sowell, an archivist at the Truman Library in Independence, Mo. Sensitive to charges that the administration had sent raw recruits off to war, Congress passed the 120-day requirement and the president went along.
Bush, who reportedly views Truman's resolute leadership in Korea as a model for his determination to stay the course in Iraq, has been far less accommodating in similar challenges on Capitol Hill.
When Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., tried this month to impose a requirement that troops get longer breaks between deployments to Iraq, Bush sent word that he'd veto it and Senate Republicans used procedural rules to kill it - for now. Some complained that the deployment restriction would impinge on Bush's constitutional prerogatives as the military's commander in chief.
Bush also threatened to veto other Democratic proposals, including one that kept the Senate in session last week for a rare, all-night debate. That proposal demanded that the president begin to remove and reposition troops in Iraq within 120 days.
"None of us are interested in dictating military strategy to the president," Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, a Democratic presidential candidate, sai d shortly before his GOP colleagues succeeded in blocking the proposal.
Republicans charged that dictating strategy is precisely what Democrats were attempting. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Wyo., said he is "always surprised" when Congress tries to transform itself into a military "command center."
But even if the Democratic effort had succeeded, history and the language of the plan itself suggests Bush could have found ways to run the war as he wishes.
"There was nothing in that amendment that said this was going to be a dramatic drawdown," said Webb, who supported it but admitted to reservations in doing so. The draft called on Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq but set no limit on the number of troops he could keep there, Webb said.
Other presidents have ignored the law or found ways to skirt it when Congress tried to dictate military movements.
After Congress in 1970 repealed the resolution that had given President Lyndon Johnson authority to wage the Vietnam War, his successor, Nixon, took more than two years to close out the conflict. Even then, the war ended for the United States not because of Congress but because Nixon negotiated a treaty with the North Vietnamese.
Gerald Ford, who followed Nixon to the White House, was equally undeterred in 1975, when Cambodia's navy seized the Mayaguez, a U.S. freighter. Despite a law barring the use of U.S. ground troops in Cambodia, Ford sent Marines to rescue the ship's crew.
"It is my constitutional responsibility to command the forces and to protect Americans," Ford told a group of lawmakers who challenged his action.
Dale Eisman, (703) 913-9872, dale.eisman@pilotonline.com
Ellie