by Jim » Mon May 30, 2011 1:10 pm
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution:“The Congress shall have power…to declare war…to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.”
Article 2, Section 2: "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States and of the Militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States,…” The president is given the specific power to conduct the military operation if Congress declares or otherwise (under the laws) mandates military action.
It seems clear enough constitutionally that the president carries out the enactments/resolutions of the Congress but does not make policy decisions regarding armed conflict and certainly does not make war as his prerogative, which is precisely what Obama did regarding Libya. Indeed, if insurrections and invasions were to be included as those happening in other nations (Libya, for instance), according to the constitution he would have been required to act in behalf of Qaddafi, not against him.
This military meddling in other nations’ affairs is not the requirement or allowance of the Constitution, of course, but does emphasize when the Congress/president can instigate or carry out military action regarding this nation, i.e., to put down insurrections and/or invasions, as, for instance, in the case of the Confederacy in 1861 or the Barbary pirates off the coast of Libya in the early 1800s, when the buccaneers “invaded” American ships.
Libya obviously did not invade or otherwise violate this country in March; therefore, according to the Constitution, neither the Congress nor the president had any right to bomb sovereign territory and murder Libyans, an absolute act of war, exactly like the action of the Japanese on 07 December 1941 at Pearl Harbor, which did result in war being declared by the Congress, not the president, who then conducted the war. In his action, Obama became a Hirohito, not a Roosevelt, not an attractive comparison.
If the main premise for Obama’s virtually unilateral action has to do with humanitarian considerations, as seems to be the case, this country/president, even if constitutionally allowed, would need a military of many millions to handle the whole world, especially the Middle East and Africa (particularly in Muslim-controlled countries), in order to protect the many populations affected.
For the Afghan and Iraqi wars, check the War Powers Act of 1973. An argument could be made that hostilities were called for, but in the case of Afghanistan there was no country to fight, just al Qaeda as sponsored by the Taliban, actually or at least protected/sponsored by the Afghan government. There should have been a declaration of war in both cases. Vietnam and Korea were hard propositions because there were no actual nations to fight, just communism. In all cases except Libya, Congress was consulted and gave approval.