I am not assuming; I am observing.
Which, as mentioned, is stupid, especially if he does what John Mace suggests and goes ahead even after Congress fails to authorize.
Regards,
Shodan
It’s been amusing watching this play out on the right-wing fora.
“Obama is going to war without the approval of Congress! He’s a tyrant!”
to
“Obama is asking Congress to make the decision! He’s weak!”
Say what you want about the President- he plays the Republicans like a fiddle.
Oh, OK. I can’t expect you to remember every exchange we had, but I did specify in an earlier reply to you (post #84) what my position was and that I recognized it to be a fringe view.
The fact that he’s a constitutional scholar only makes one wonder why he now thinks he doesn’t need authority from Congress to lob missiles at another country. He has not bothered to explain to us yet how his position has “evolved” on this issue.
I thing Obama knows he put his foot in his mouth, and this is his way of trying to extract it. Obama might get a majority of the Senate behind him, but getting a majority of the House to authorize war with Syria is pretty much physically impossible. Congress will vote “No,” and this will provide political cover for Obama to shrug his shoulders and say “Sorry, but my hands are tied.”
As for Option 3, I don’t think any president is enough of a war hawk to risk getting impeached for treason. I dare say that starting a war explicitly against the wishes of Congress would be a textbook example of this.
How would it be treason? Which enemy would he be giving aid and comfort to?
I have nothing to base this on but my own suspicions, but when the White House says that it has the authority to launch a strike on their own without congressional approval, it sounds to me an awful lot like the Bush signing statement furor.
Bush made all those signing statements about how he thought he didn’t have to abide by all those laws… but for all those hundreds of signing statements, it seems like the Bush White House followed the law, even though they felt like they technically didn’t have to. I think no matter who is in the White House, the President and his advisers will always, always assert that they have hugely expansive powers that they simply choose not to exercise.
In other words, from the White House POV, if there is any dispute whatsoever on whether the President has a certain power, even if the President does not intend to use that power, why would the President state that the power isn’t his?
Generally, I agree but, in this case, candidate Obama explicitly told us he didn’t think the president had that power. Like I said, I would like to know how his position evolved. If he wants to use your argument, so be it. I don’t think that would be very convincing, though, coming from a “constitutional scholar”.
I’m going to disagree with the “Constitutional scholar” label. He taught Con Law at U Chicago as a lecturer. He did get offered a tenure-track position (or a tenured position: UChicago is kinda’ coy on which it was.), despite having only no published scholarly articles and one published six-page what looks like a case note.. ‘Scholars’ generally have a bit more output than that. Talk to law school profs and see how common a deal like that is. It helps when your school has next to no African-American faculty at the time of your hire and you are an up and comer in local politics. (The previous link is to an NYT story on Obama’s time at U Chicago, and is quite interesting, IMHO.) Accordingly, please spare us the appeal to authority argument that Barack Obama is a Constitutional Law scholar and we should take on faith any statement from him about the extent of Executive power.
We do not know whether the War Powers Resolution of 1973 is unconstitutional or not until the Supreme Court deigns to hear a case on it. Campbell v. Clinton, 203 F.3d 19 (D.C. Cir. 2000). would have been a nice opportunity, but oh well. FWIW, according to the Library of Congress’s research guide on the Resolution, every President has felt that the WPR was an unconstitutional power-grab by Congress, so no surprise that Obama would feel the same way. Nor, along with John Mace’s observation above, is it surprising that his views would change from being a Member of Congress to being the President.
IMHO, Congress doesn’t have the votes to impeach, nor the will to cut off funding for any military excursion, so there’s not much they can do at the moment besides deny the Administration an AUMF. Still, as with the Kosovo war, the President will get a lot of leeway to do what he wants with his military, until somebody f*%k’s up in a bad way. Then Congress might remember they’re the branch with the ability to declare war and decide to slap the President down. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
Okay, I guess I just don’t see why it’s supposed to be stupid. Especially if (as I thought you were saying before) he actually doesn’t want to do it, or at least, isn’t too gung ho about it.
I am not sure what you’re referring to here… please help me in my ignorance.
Though there’s something to be said about knowing how your words will be interpreted after the fact, I don’t think too much should be said for that. When I go back and read what Obama actually said about a red line etc, and carefully think about what his words actually mean, I realize he never said or implied the proposition “If Assad uses chemical weapons we will take military action against him.”
Thanks for that information, assuming it checks out I’ll take it on board in the future.
This is not what I said, nor did I imply it. Scalia is a constitutional scholar, and I disagree with him about alot of things concerning the constitution–but I think twice before I do. That is all I said one should do w.r.t. Obama.
Candidate Obama in a 2007 Boston Globe interview:
This must be what you were referring to in your post to me as well. I know he said something or other, but what exactly did he say?
Found it.
.
Don’t know if anything was said before or after the abovequoted that contextualizes the meaning. Has Obama made a case in the present situation that this involves an “actual or imminant threat” to the nation?
Here is the original. I agree that this appears to constitute an evolution of views.
That would be the part about “levying war against the United States.” If Congress tells you, “No you may not start a war with Syria,” and you do it anyways, you’ve comitted treason.
Get real. Violating the separation of powers, as serious as that is, does not constitute “war.”
Al Qaeda. By waging war against the guy standing between them and control of Syria’s chemical weapons.