Congress silent on
war | By Ross K. Bake | 15/03/2003
Debates rage nearly everywhere about the wisdom of America's
imminent resort to war: in the British House of Commons, the Turkish
Parliament, the UN Security Council, in city council chambers nationwide
and among friends over coffee. But the one place from which Americans
might expect to hear a dramatic clash of opinions, the U.S. Congress, has
been mostly silent.
Much has happened since October 10, when Congress resoundingly approved a
joint resolution authorising President Bush to enforce the UN resolutions
calling for the disarming of Iraq.
But the whirlwind of events - UN inspections, opposition in Europe -
hasn't prompted much discussion on the floor of either the House or the
Senate. The reasons for this silence are both simple and complex - the
result of political influences as ancient as the Constitution and as
current as the latest public opinion polls.
The puzzlement of people outside government is matched almost perfectly
by the discomfort of people on Capitol Hill in explaining why formal
discussion has ceased.
For starters, insiders will tell you that the issues were debated up to
the vote on the joint resolution. This is a more sublimated version of
the quip, "Been there, done that."
But the Senate's lack of spirited debate in particular baffles those who
are aware of the chamber's oratorical past and its fondness for
describing itself as the world's "greatest deliberative body."
Senators are always eager to stress the superior debating possibilities
on their side of the Capitol, often heaping scorn on House leaders for
the tight rhetorical limits they impose on members. The senators have
created expectations that they are now unable to meet.
War and peace have generated great debates on Capitol Hill throughout
U.S. history. There was a prolonged and fierce debate over U.S.
neutrality in advance of both world wars, and a lengthy discussion before
authorising force to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1991.
Indeed, the very origin of the cloture motion that now shuts off debate
in the Senate is in the reaction to the Senate filibuster by isolationist
senators who opposed President Woodrow Wilson's proposal to arm U.S.
merchant vessels to protect them against German submarines.
So what's stopping this body of well-spoken legislators from coming up
with an occasion for debate? The answer, sadly, is the absence of a
"vehicle." This is Hill jargon for a pending bill that could
have amendments attached. For example, if the massive appropriations bill
that recently passed were still under discussion, amendments might be
offered that could precipitate a debate.
Instead, for the past month, the Senate has been tied up in a Democratic
filibuster over Miguel Estrada, one of Bush's judicial appointees.
So as far as the Senate is concerned, the train has left the station and
nothing else is coming down the track.
This isn't to say that senators have been entirely silent. Outside the
chamber, Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle took aim at Bush last
week, as did House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. But the oratory has
mostly come from the usual sources. Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts
Democrat, proposed that the president return to Congress for an
additional authorisation to go to war, and Robert Byrd of West Virginia
delivered a stirring February 12 speech that opponents of the war have
been widely disseminating by e-mail.
Political security
But few of their Democratic colleagues feel they have the level of
political security those two men enjoy. Kennedy's state is a hotbed of
anti-war feeling; Byrd, also unassailable at home, is well-known for his
lengthy speeches on subjects ranging from current affairs to the wisdom
of the Greek philosopher and historian Polybius.
Members of Congress are astute students of public opinion, particularly
skilled at drawing distinctions between massive campaigns of e-mail or
telephone inspired by activists and the temper of their own constituents.
The "virtual march" on Washington, the recent e-mail onslaught
by anti-war groups, probably had less aggregate effect on legislators
than one neatly typed letter of protest from one of their own
voters.
Public opinion polls seem to be telling lawmakers that more Americans
support the president than oppose him, and for all of the celebrities and
academics who loudly deplore his course, there are more people who back
him, even if with reservations about going to war without UN backing or
wider support from traditional U.S. allies.
Beyond that, the most basic reason for Congress' passivity derives from
the deference that the Hill has traditionally given the president in
international affairs and during times of national peril.
While Congress kept presidents on a fairly short tether in the republic's
early years, that changed as the United States assumed a greater global
role. In 1846, James Polk felt obliged to seek a declaration of war after
he had dispatched the army to occupy territory claimed by Mexico. But a
hundred years later, in 1950, Harry S. Truman dispatched troops to Korea
and never sought congressional assent.
And modern presidents sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to win the
fight. Franklin D. Roosevelt essentially hoodwinked lawmakers - albeit in
a noble cause - into approving the Lend-Lease Act in 1941.
He told them that authorising him to transfer armaments on the most
favourable terms to countries opposed to Nazi Germany and Japan would
keep the United States out of the war, although we now know he had no
intention of remaining on the sidelines. Lyndon Johnson misled Congress
in 1964 when he turned the ambiguous Tonkin Gulf incident into a pretext
for an open-ended congressional authorisation of force to repel North
Vietnamese attacks, legislation later described as "the functional
equivalent of a declaration of war."
Even the 1973 War Powers Act, the pinnacle of congressional assertiveness
at the end of the Vietnam War, has been of little use in curbing
determined presidents, not least because chief executives regard it as an
unconstitutional restraint on their authority.
Did Bush pull the wool over Congress' eyes in his assertions of Saddam
Hussein's indirect complicity in the September 11, 2001, attacks or his
harbouring of terrorists?
What about his changing rationales for going to war, sometimes merely to
disarm Saddam, sometimes to supplant the Iraqi regime for its aggressive
intent, sometimes to liberate the Iraqi people and spur democracy in the
Middle East?
Even now, on the verge of war, Bush's reasons remain variable. The cut
and thrust of congressional debate might induce him to better explain and
clarify his goals.
Abraham Lincoln, as a freshman congressman, sought just such a
clarification. He was unsatisfied with Polk's rationales for seeking war
with Mexico and puzzled about Polk's postwar plans.
Lincoln complained in a speech on January 12, 1848, that, "the
president is, in no wise, satisfied with his own positions. First he
takes up one, and attempting to argue us into it, he argues himself out
of it; then seizes another and goes through the same process; and then,
confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches up the old
one again, which he has some time before cast off."
Those who wonder why today's lawmakers are unable to confront Bush with
so trenchant an analysis should note that Lincoln's speech was given
after the war had been underway for 18 months.
Then, as now, Congress was far better at sifting through the debris of
failed policies than at averting them.
If all does not go well with the war, the first time Bush comes to
Congress to request additional funds there will be a vigorous debate.
But even then, Congress will surely succumb to the president's argument
that soldiers in the field should not be deprived of resources.
Advantage
The advantage in matters of war and peace has passed decisively to the
executive, a trend already well-established before Sept-ember 11. Since
then, however, the president's ability to invoke the spectre of terrorism
has exerted a powerful influence on Congress and has made it conform to
his will on any proposal that can be plausibly linked to homeland
security.
The advent of Republican control in both the legislative and executive
branch has accentuated this trend.
The challenge that Congress faces is how to remain constitutionally
relevant when the menacing shadow of terrorism looms and the most
compelling logic argues for according the president the greatest latitude
in combating it.
But it is the very nature of the war against terrorism - its indefinite
duration, its geographic diffuseness, its controversial tactics - that
imposes on Congress the duty to ask questions the American people want
asked. That's even more true when the president has been granted such
sweeping powers - powers that, in all likelihood, will be augmented in
the future.
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