From NRO’s The Corner:
Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) is quickly establishing himself as a leading opponent of President Obama’s Libya policy. Earlier today, the freshman introduced a resolution to reassert congressional authority over matters of war. To make his point, Paul quoted, in the legislative language, from Obama’s 2007 remarks on the subject: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
According to Paul’s office, “the measure aims to put the Senate on record affirming Congress as the body with constitutional authority on matters of war.”…
Which is all completely true. As you all know, I’m in favor of our intervention in Libya. Belatedly and with incredibly maladroit tactics, Obama finally did part of what needed to be done…but he did it only after consulting the UN and other foreigners, hardly any of whom care at all about the Libyan people, and none of them caring at all about what is best for the United States. Obama should have gone to Congress for authorization before the guns went off.
You can’t, of course, put the cat back in the bag – the war in Libya will go on as it will and I do earnestly hope that someone in the Obama Administration is starting to think about what we want and how we might obtain it. But we must ensure that this President and all future Presidents know that except in clear cases of self-defense, the United States Congress must always vote to authorize military action before it takes place. We mustn’t place too much blame on Obama over this – after all, it was Harry Truman who first committed the US to war without Congressional authorization…that was the first strike against the war-declaring power of Congress, and it built up a body of precedent Obama eventually used to start war in Libya. This state of affairs must be finally and firmly corrected.
Legislation should be passed specifically enjoining the use of defense funds for armed conflict – except in cases of self-defense or in carrying out properly ratified defense treaties – until Congress has voted to authorize. That way, any future action like the war in Libya will be a clearly impeachable offense, thus deterring the President from doing such a thing again.
To be sure, having to get Congressional authorization will slow down any process of engaging in war – it might, in fact, cause us to lose in future conflicts crucial days which will have to be paid for later at a high price. But a free society can only function if the rules are strictly observed, especially when the rules are terribly inconvenient. The rule is that Congress declares war and appropriates funds for the conflict – without such declaration and appropriation, no war should happen except, once again, in cases of self defense…and, of course, in such cases the relevant authorization and appropriation would be swiftly forthcoming.
Furthermore, I would prefer, as I’ve stated before, that we completely re-work the way we engage in international relations, as well as the manner in which we deploy our military during peace time. I would prefer legislation prohibiting the deployment of US ground forces outside of United States territory except during a declared state of war. Naval and air forces can keep an enemy at bay long enough for the ground troops to arrive, and by not having our “boots on the ground” we can regain our long-lost freedom of action … the time to ponder military action and prepare for it before we send our best to fight and bleed in foreign lands.
Much has been lost of our Constitutional republic over the past 70 or 80 years. Our liberty and our safety are dependent upon our rebuilding what has been lost. There is no better place to start than in military matters as those affairs concern most directly actual lives – and from such a re-assertion of Constitutional powers will flow the political will to restore all the rest of our atrophied rights and liberties.
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