Issues of presidential authority for taking military action are complicated and somewhat dependent on the nature of the threat at hand. Syria is not an imminent threat to American security despite their use of chemical weapons on their own people (a horrible action no doubt). Bombing Syria for their breach of international law in using chemical weapons therefore should require the President to ask Congress for authorization before he orders it.
About 140 Representatives in the House (from both parties) have asked the President to seek that authority. It is not clear he will do so. It is also telling which Massachusetts Reps have signed the letter. Capuano signed a bipartisan letter. Lynch, McGovern and Tsongas have signed a Democratic letter authored by California Rep Barbara Lee. I would like my Rep Joe Kennedy to call for the President to seek authorization too. Will he? I will just have to ask him. Shouldn’t all our delegation be pushing for that?
Former Senator Obama had this to say about the merits of president’s receiving the approval of Congress for military action in 2007 – has he changed his tune now? Libya suggests yes. Syria too? This from a TIME article citing a Boston Globe interview from back then – the article is called Syria Intervention Would Reaffirm Obama’s Biggest Flip Flop:
In 2007, Barack Obama was asked when Presidents have the authority to launch a military strike without congressional authorization. He had a precise answer at the ready.
“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,” Obama told the Boston Globe.
It is worth noting President Obama is a constitutional law scholar.
On the MA Senate side, Markey has said he would support a limited surgical strike. Elizabeth Warren was more cautious. Where do they stand on authorization though? I have not seen a position taken by them on that issue.
You can agree or disagree with whether a move against Syria is right or not – but the issue of whether the President does it with or without Congressional sanction is important. I know as Democrats we are inclined to trust Obama’s motives more than we would a Republican neo-con’s impulses. I do. But Bush got authorization to attack Iraq. Big mistake of course, but he got the sanction he needed. What is bad about Obama not seeking authorization is that when another Republican comes around looking to blow the world up, it will be that much harder to argue he needs Congressional backing – the check-and-balance on presidential authority will be further eroded – and we liberals may not be able to say much about it.
Mr. President, make your case to Congress (and the people) if you want to hit Assad. And Mass Reps: JoeK3 on down; tell him he has to do it. It is important and time is short.
David Cameron is not obliged under the law to ask Parliament but he did, they bravely said no with a bipartisan majority, and he has said he won’t do it. I suspect, as was the case with Libya, Obama would get authorization but I doubt he will seek it. Having gotten away with violating the law once he will do so again. I am against the strike, but its proponents should favor an open debate and authorization by Congress. It may be the right war of choice, but its a war of choice all the same.
What about something on the scale of a modern-day Holocaust?
1. 100,000 have died so far. If loss of civilian life is the issue, why didn’t we step in for the first 99,000?
2. Syria – enemy. Libya – enemy. Egypt – friend. Do we only step in when it’s the other guy’s dictator?
3. There isn’t actually great proof that Syria knowingly used Satin gas to kill masses. Quite the contrary, as others have indicated.
4. This isn’t the holocaust. It was awfully early in the threads to invoke Godwin’s law. Please stay on topic.
1. Ask Obama
2. Ask Obama
3. Not my understanding of the situation- do you mean that they intended to kill fewer people with chemical weapons, or hat they didn’t intend to use chemical weapons at all?
4. Good point, I guess- I was just trying to figure out if jconway ever thought “humanitarian internvention” was justified.
I’m asking you.
Going in now that there’s an excuse seems really convenient when it’s to do damage to a regime that has connections to Russia, not us.
If we don’t ask ourselves this question, this all smacks of “we’re invading because freedom!”
And if using chemical weapons should prompt an international bombing campaign, what about Agent Orange? Does that not count?
So, is it only not okay if Russia’s allies and “rogue nations” use chemical weapons, but perfectly okay when we use them? Should nations around the world have bombed random targets in the United States back then? Would that have been acceptable? And if not, why not?
What makes the suffering and innocent civilians of Syria any different, that we should drop bombs on them? As others have said on this thread, there’s really no such thing as a “surgical strike.”
#3 — if that’s not your understanding, you’re operating from the dark. Links have been offered to Juan Cole’s take on this below. Apparently you haven’t read them.
It makes things very clear: we don’t know what the frack is going on. We don’t know if Assad or his government had any idea that sarin gas was being used. We just don’t know — and, like with Iraq back in the day, we haven’t let the UN inspectors do/finish their job.
The fact that you’re completely ignorant on this and want to bomb, bomb, bomb anyway isn’t inspiring.
Are you really prepared to kill innocent civilians, take that rebuke and foster unknown consequences without all the facts? Without letting the UN inspectors do their job? Without seeing if it was Assad’s government that used the weapons, or some other force, or some kind mistake by a low level military commander on the ground?
We have neither the moral ground to stand on nor the facts to ensure we’re not making a terrible mistake. It may well be that John Kerry’s speech today will end up a lot like Colin Powell’s.
I’m wondering whether napalm also counts. The Vietnam War offered a veritable smorgasbord of violations of international law.
The hypocrisy of our stance on these matters is nauseating.
Our use of napalm and indiscriminate bombing and destruction of civilian targets in Vietnam was perhaps the primary motivator for my opposition to it as a 16 year old. At that time, Senator Kerry presented himself as voice of courage in opposition to the clear immorality.
It is disappointing to, fifty years later, see Senator Kerry and others of my generation so flagrantly pandering to our national prejudices — I long to see evidence of the courage that was once so evident.
after all, which probably means no action will be taken. FWIW, I think it’s completely appropriate for Congress to have the final say. I don’t subscribe to you folks’ arguments that, because America has done terrible things, we should give up on attempting to protect civilians from atrocities or promoting human rights worldwide. I’m cynical, but not quite that cynical yet. But you may all be right that we would make things worse by intervening. Honestly I don’t know- I thought that we might utilize some of the same strategies that resulted in Bin Laden’s assassination- there were minimal casualties in that operation. Probably I’ve seen too many movies- certainly I’ve never been in the military, and would never want to be. A foolish, indiscriminate bombing campaign would accomplish nothing positive, as you all say.
I think you’re missing the analogies Ryan made. I suspect that’s because you care more about your self-regard with respect to principles than actually living, breathing Syrian people. Thus does abstraction lead to a sloppy lack of concern for human life.
Let me just hope you do not drive a car.
At least accoridng to the Herald’;s account of the U.S. report. Frankly, your response sucks ass as well, Kbusch.
How?
By encouraging war mongers?
Brilliant!
but concentrating really hard on the fact that there are living, breathing people in Syria. A “religious” solution, you might call it.
So you’re outrage!!!!! by various things in Syria. Doing nothing is wrong because outrage!!!! We have to do something because outrage!!!!
The fact that people are involved seems to have escaped you just as it escapes other outraged people like those who succumb to road rage.
Could you maybe think carefully about how we can reduce casualties if at all by doing something rather than letting your outrage!!!! take over your thinking.
No one is arguing this. That’s what I principally meant about the bozoness of your respnse. SomervilleTom is nauseated by the hypocrisy perhaps, but that’s as far as it goes.
Do you think the US should ever step in to stop the killing of civilians?
Yes.
Now let me point out that Syrians are not pawns on a board, figures of speech, or GI Joe dolls.
Christopher has resorted to downratings.
Thus, is the emptiness of the “Do Something! Anything!” party made manifest.
…equal downratings. Note I uprated one of farnkoff’s comments on this thread. You can take those comments as basically my responses as well.
Why is your side of this debate so, well, lazy?
And isn’t laziness on questions of war and peace somewhat less than meritorious?
Just like I told jconway elsewhere that his individual opinion to which he is entitled does not make him responsible for Assad, my own individual opinion to which I am entitled does not put me on the hook for producing a plan from start to finish and answering every question of how, when, to what extent, etc. That’s what we have leaders for and I trust the current administration a lot more than I did the last one in this regard.
Would you have trusted LBJ in 1965 more or less than Obama?
Why or why not?
What I do know is our commitments to that part of the world started with Eisenhower, and of course retrospective what ifs have to be careful about not taking into account information from later.
I’ll accept a general sketch. I haven’t heard a peep out of you or farnkoff about how an intervention would achieve a desirable outcome. Why don’t you read General Dempsey’s letter then? Link is in the diary I just published.
The War Powers Act requires it after a certain period of time and of course as noted even Bush got that for Iraq.
Representative Lynch:
I am utterly disappointed with Markey’s response which is full of hardware (he seems to have focused on the best sort of missiles for the operation) and short on plan.
Let’s pause a moment to think this through.
Whatever the U.S. does, it is unlikely to remove Assad from power. In fact, anything that does remove Assad from power is going to be uncomfortable — or worse — with the Russians and maybe Chinese.
So what does Assad do after the U.S. carries out some “surgical” strikes.
Well, one thing: he has even more motivation to eliminate the opposition.
Another, he might find that his regime survives surgical strikes just fine and so maybe the down side of nerve gas is not as bad as he thought.
A third bad side effect: A strike against Assad inspires his allies to send him even more weaponry. He’ll have better anti-aircraft defenses that Qaddafi.
So this bomb dropping is merely done to make some Westerners “feel good”. It doesn’t stop the killing. It could make things much worse.
Senator Markey, tell us again which missiles would make the perfect fit?
It seems like there had been some consensus before that usage of these weapons constituted a war crime. Have we given up, as a “Global Community”, the idea of policing such violations?
it’s too early to dish out explosions.
At least wait until the UN inspectors are out and have a report.
His blog Informed Comment has some viewpoints one might not see in the papers or on TV.
We might want to be calmer and more deliberate about strikes.
But so what? We’re not God. We’re in no position to enforce that, and, as I point out, no one seems to be able to explain how an action on our part is going to accomplish any good.
Question: How many innocent Syrians are you personally willing to kill to accomplish this? Will it be more or fewer than the number of innocent but dead Iraqis and Vietnamese? And what if you knew these Syrians, so they weren’t just abstract statistics whose only protection is the phony adjective “surgical”.
We have had formal, documented evidence that George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, and a large number of their senior staffs ordered actions that the international community has long considered war crimes — prominently including water-boarding (for whom we executed Japanese military personnel after WWII).
The US has made NO effort to prosecute these war crimes, and the US has steadfastly refused to join the International Court — correctly fearing that we might exposing ourselves to liability in so doing.
Until we take ANY steps, even small ones, to prosecute and punish (if convicted) our own war criminals and war crimes, I have little patience for strident calls for “action” against the “war crimes” of others.
Mr. Assad is a cover-boy for why Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney should have been prosecuted for war crimes.
Not the best question. In the event another Holocaust style event was occurring I would analyze the facts ok the ground and see if US intervention would make a difference. In this actual situation, which is actually
happening, we are dealing with an state actor and a multitude of non state actors representing different social and ethnic factions fighting
one another and brutalizing one another. This war is so fluid
it’s disingenuous even to talk about “sides” since there are so many factions.
The only war this is comproable to is Lebanon, and you can ask te Israelis how wise their well intentioned effort was to back the Phalangists (who sometimes fought them and sometimes committed terrible atrocities the Israelis got blamed for). Ronald Reagan thought the US could police that situation and we lost 282 marines-to date the first single day loss of military life since the Tet Offensive. I am saying let the inspectors do their job, lets get all the facts first, and lets really analyze the costs and benefits of our actions in the short and long term. Lets give Congress the final day and let’s have the administration give us all the facts. Unfortunately, they appear to be selecting the intelligence that backs their conclusions rather than letting the intelligence form ther conclusions. It’s a mistake of the Bush years we’d be wise to avoid, especially if we are paying with lives.
The historical record seems to show that an intervention can work, but only if there is a politically legitimate force within the target state to support. Think Kosovo or Bosnia. If there isn’t (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam), then we end up supporting this abstract thing “democracy” with a dysfunctional, rights-abusing government. For example, christopher elsewhere seems to suggest we shouldn’t pick sides but we should just pick democracy. That certainly has not worked in Afghanistan, has it? We have the best vote-buying, corrupt warlords possible, a very weak defense against the more puritan Taliban.
Or stated differently, regime change can work but it has to be a “regime change to” ; it cannot merely be a “regime change from”.
Since there is no one to support in the Syrian civil war, what does that leave. Do we think perhaps that weakening Assad is going to lead to a better outcome? Do we want Syria to become a failed state? How about a theocracy? Those are better? For whom? Please don’t harbor any rosy notions either about how wonderful and humanitarian the opposition forces are. They’re quite brutal, too.
So it’s not at all clear that “punishing” Assad has any chance of improving matters for the people who matter, i.e., Syrians. Before we rush in to recklessly and lethally do something anything, we should take care. That, after all, is how surgeons strike.
Democracy, in order to succeed, requires more than just handing the keys of government to the public. We learned this in the South during the reconstruction era, we learned this in Vietnam, we are re-learning this in Afghanistan.
In my view, the notion that “democracy” is some panacea that automatically produces better results than the other alternatives is just more magical — and essentially religious — thinking.
Yes, democracy has succeeded in America and in large portions of the first world. An important prerequisite has been a voting population that is largely literate, has at least a basic understanding of what government is and what it does, and has at least a basic level of prosperity to temper the attractions offered by criminals. Another is a society that has at least SOME functioning law-and-order apparatus — murder and rape are punished through law enforced by government (not vengeance), contracts are mostly met, property is reasonably secure, and so on.
Among those prerequisites is, in my opinion, a world-view that elevates the perpetuation of society above the perceived directives of religious belief. I suspect that a population that embraces the notion that the lives of non-believers are worthless in comparison to believers is not likely to create a sustainable democracy, whether that religion is Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, or Buddhism. I think that is true here in America as well as anywhere else in the world.
I think that when the situation in Syria becomes grave enough to motivate even one of our first-world peers to take action — Germany, the UK, Russia, China, etc. — then that will be a good time for us to examine our desire to participate.
I think the America forfeited our claim to “moral leadership” around the time that we invaded Iraq in 2003 on utterly fabricated pretenses, and then subsequently failed to prosecute the perpetrators of well-documented and flagrant war crimes.
I think that a consequence of having forfeited that claim is that we should now wait for someone else to step up in Syria and in situations like it.
…except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”
You make some valid points, but I reject your notion that because our record isn’t squeaky clean in Vietnam, Iraq, etc, we cannot appeal to the better angels of our own and global humanities nature.
I have no problem with appealing to the “better angels” of ourselves and the international community. I think, in fact, that I said that that was precisely what we SHOULD do.
It is time for one of those better angels to lead the charge, because we now lack the moral standing to do so. We have agreed that none of the proposals on the table even meet the low standard of “do no harm” — hence, the ONLY argument you seem to be advancing is, in essence that we are “more moral” than everyone else in the world.
I reject that argument.
That’s part of the point of force – to hit where it hurts and punish a regime for acting like monsters. I’m not even necessarily saying that we are more or most moral. I am saying that the use of these weapons on civilians is a crime against humanity and must be stopped, preferably yesterday.
I was referring to the standard we earlier agreed on, I thought, that said any alternative should do more good than harm. None on the table meet that standard.
Since all of the players in the international community see the same evidence we see, and since none of them apparently see a necessity to act, then you are in fact saying that we are “more or most moral” by insisting that we be the one to act.
I, and perhaps kbusch and others, agree with you that the use of these weapons on civilians is a crime against humanity. I’ll even go so far as to say it must be stopped.
I do not believe that WE must be the one to act. I think the better path is for us to express our condemnation, express our willingness to consider supporting whatever other nation chooses to lead the way (so long as they propose a viable alternative that does more good than harm), and then simply wait.
When a viable alternative is offered, by you or anyone else, I will of course reconsider my posture.
If the standard is do more good than harm I’m on board, if the standard is do no harm that is unrealistic. I’m not sure who besides us could lead, both in the sense of the necessary resources and the fact that we are terrible followers.
Every year, landmines kill 15,000 to 20,000 people — most of them children, women and the elderly — and severely maim countless more.
In 2009, we learned that Land Mine Treaty Won’t Be Signed By Obama Administration.
…but don’t get me started on the treaties that we refuse to sign joined it seems only by nations we usually call rogue.
You say we should use forcible intervention to protect civilians from horrific death (leaving aside whether said intervention will actually accomplish that protection), and that is what our government is selling. The same government, however, reserves the right to use a technology that kills and maims far more civilians than chemicals do, and keeps on doing so for years after the reason for using it is history. If chemicals are so bad that we feel obligated to step in when someone uses them, why do we not step in when landmines are deployed? Why do we want to be able to deploy them ourselves?
Landmines are sort of irrelevant to this discussion, if we could get an exemption for the landmines in the DMZ I am sure we would sign the treaty, and the US has not used them in any conflict since Vietnam. Cluster bombs we can and should outlaw and start taking proactive measures to eliminate.
But I agree with Christopher that just because we haven’t signed the land mine treaty does not mean we cannot enforce the Chemical Weapons Ban which we have signed. Where I disagree with him is whether we have any good options of enforcement that wont make the problem worse, I suspect that we do not.
Small comfort to the Vietnamese, when More than one-third of the land in six central Vietnamese provinces remains contaminated with land mines and unexploded bombs from the Vietnam War. [ca. 2009]
When the Korean peninsula is eventually reunited, they’ll face the same situation – weapons of war continuing to kill people long after the war is over.
We absolutely should work with their government on cleaning up after ourselves there and in any warzone we have fought. The DMZ is special since we would need ROK and PROK cooperation on their removal and it the least aptly named place in the world is to militarization all over the line. Land mines aren’t the most dangerous things embedded there. But yeah, I’d sign the treaty and I’d stop using cluster bombs, white phosphorous, defoliating agents and depleted uranium.
I am saying that since we have a lot of stockpiles of nasty weapons doesn’t mean we can’t stop other countries from using theirs-but we shouldn’t have these stockpiles and I can’t think of a realistic way to stop Syria.
I used the phrase “no harm” as an abbreviation for more-harm-than-good. I’m sorry I confused you.
Now that we’ve agreed — again — that we should not pursue any alternative that fails to meet the more-good-than-harm criteria, what is your response to the substance of my earlier comment?
My point is that if we cannot identify an acceptable action to pursue and cannot identify an acceptable agent to lead that action, then how — other than manifest hubris — do we conclude that we should act anyway?
Could I remind you that Vietnam was conducted by one of the most domestically successful liberal Presidents of the 20th century, second only in accomplishment to FDR? It’s hard to find a better “good guy” to have run a war. It’s hard to find a war more atrociously run: it had the explicit goal of depopulating the countryside and transferring the population to poorly run, barely habitable camps.
I’m not arguing and I don’t think somervilletom is arguing that we shouldn’t intervene because it would look hypocritical, or because we don’t “deserve” to after Vietnam and Iraq. I am specifically arguing that intervening in Syria doesn’t look any better than intervening in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Vietnam did before we intervened. And all the careful calculus of intervention I’ve heard has shown remarkable care and subtlety about reducing American casualties, and none whatever about reducing Syrian.
Finally, many more people died as a result of the Iraq intervention than Saddam Hussein butchered. We even destroyed an entire city (Fallujah).
Good intentions don’t guarantee good results. To be ethical here is to stop congratulating oneself for one’s excellent intentions and to think about how to guarantee good results.
So fine, let’s not run this like Vietnam. Let’s run it more like the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. We should of course do everything we can to minimize unnecessary casualties and damage, but if the standard is to not cause ANY more casualties and damage that’s an argument against going to war even when we are directly attacked.
She did not say that standard is “to not cause ANY more casualties and damage”. She instead said that our “cure” was worse then the disease of Saddam Hussein.
One minimal standard is to not kill, maim, and injure more people than are at risk from whatever bad guy we propose to stop. We should not again be in the business of burning villages to save them.
We had a 78 day air war that last 70 days longer than planned. First we targeted the command and control facilities of the Milosevic regime, then we had to ‘expand the campaign’ to cover bridges, infrastructure and switched to a mode of collective punishment against the Serbian population for not rising up against Milosevic. When they in fact, rallied around him, we ended up suing for peace after getting a verbal agreement to stop the cleansing in Kosovo and after the Serbians withdrew. We also promised them we would not back Kosovo sovereignity without a referendum, which we renegged on. We stood by while the KLA burned Serbian homes and consolidated Albanian control of the new Kosovo.
We also stood by and sometimes provided air cover to Croatian and Bosnian armies ethnically cleansing Serbian populations. We did this to ensure that the populations would have their own state, states that are going to be propped up by a near permanent contingency of US troops. We regularly lose about 10-20 a year in car accidents, helicopter crashes, and training exercises I might add.
So the media may call it a success, Wesley Clark, who thanks to the British didn’t fire on Russian troops, may have made his political career out of it, and no Americans died, but we wasted a ton of money, killed tons of civilians, and set their infrastructure back to the stone age, and failed at our goal to compel Milosevic to surrender. He gave up power two years later after rigging elections he would’ve lost for economic, rather than foreign policy reasons. It was a failure, not a success.
That I would recommend reading on Kosovo in particular, and the failure of air campaigns to achieve political goals
or, in any event, for reasons that were entirely fabricated in the service of a secret motive that is still unknown, at least to me. In Vietnam, we rushed to the aid of an evil dictator fighting a communist insurrection. Those scenarios look different to me than this one does, Kbusch. This appears to be an ongoing humanitarian situation, like Darfur or Yugoslavia. It doesn’t seem like it will “get better” on its own. I understand your skepticism, given Iraq and Vietnam as models. Are they the appropriate models for this situation, though? I don’t think they are.
However, I do wonder whether there are other countries where this kind of thing is going on (state-sponsored massacres of civilians, perhaps even with chemical or biological weapons), where we don’t care or even hear about it, such as in Africa or other parts of Asia? And if there are, then certainly that would be another cause for great skepticism.
and taking into account jconway’s comments about the Balkans, how is it similar other than being humanitarian? Is the happy endpoint a separation of Syria into Northeast and Southwest?
“Humnitarian” is not a political strategy. “Humanitarian” is not a military campaign. It’s just a motive. You have excellent, wonderful, laudable motives, farnkoff. You haven’t given an “If we do X, then Y will result and Y will be better because Z.”
If you could fill in the blanks, then we could have a conversation. Heterodox conservative Ross Douthat gives a more coherent answer than you have, and his interest too is more in the future than the Syrians of today.
Secretary of State Kerry does a Colin Powell imitation proving a deep voice is all you need to convince people. He even shows pictures from Iraq to demonstrate what’s happening in Syria. Do we really believe the powers-that-be really care whether or not men, women and children die, by whose hand? Maybe if we did we’d stop the terror bombing of men, women and children at funerals, wedding parties and schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Could the real reason for the push to bombing of Syria be Realpolitik? The income of Qatar and Saudi Arabia are imperiled by a new pipeline terminating in Syria. Then there’s the death merchants… The politicians are deep in the pockets of vested interests.
What happens if the Syrians shoot back? Anyone think of that? Maybe some in the military, but this whole situation looks like it’s molded around foreign and vendor interests.
Are we so easily taken in? Are we history’s fools?
““History is a set of lies agreed upon.” –Napoleon Bonaparte
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. I fail to see how bombing Syria constitutes any kind of humanitarian response. What will force accomplish? Regardless of what we do, Syria is in the midst of a civil war, one which may go on for a protracted period of time. Why are chemicals weapons the line in the sand? Assad has tortured, maimed, and brutalized his own people. Responding to this chemical weapons attack will change nothing and hurt us as a country. We will continue to look like hypocrites and bullies.
Contributing to this blog is surely worthwhile, but there’s much more that one can do, whether opposed to any Syria intervention (as I am) or just desiring the president seek approval under the War Powers Act for any intervention he contemplates. Surely we should take heart from what just happened in the British Parliament, where plainly the level of public opposition played a huge part in the momentous defeat of Prime Minister Cameron’s bid to intervene in Syria. Parliament is not Congress, to be sure, but this is a fight worth fighting!
So be in touch with your representative and with your senators. I even offer a template: take what applies from the following letter I just sent to 6th CD candidates Tierney and Moulton and send it to your House member and both senators:
Re: Syria?
Candidates:
Where are you on this? It’s a vital matter.
National polls now show Americans clearly oppose intervention in Syria. Cf. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/how-an-insular-beltway-elite-makes-wars-of-choice-more-likely/279116/. I doubt the results are very different in Massachusetts as a whole, or in any of its House districts–surely there is no less opposition and there may be more.
So, first, I would like, if you support any kind of intervention here concerning the chemical attacks matter, for you to explain clearly what you know, or believe, that justifies flying in the face of this opposition, on a matter where no vital interest of the US exists, and where explicit American involvement may aggravate already deadly levels of violence.
Second, I would like you to explain why–assuming Assad’s government and perhaps Assad himself is responsible for the chemical attacks–-a military response is the right one. Why is this not precisely a time, if the evidence is so clear and incontrovertible, to lay it before the world, to seek referral of the chemical attacks to the International Criminal Court, and to invite all the parties of interest, including Iran, to a conference on Syria where all matters are on the table before all parties? (This is someone else’s good idea which I happen to share. See the sketch of a proposal by Harvard’s Stephen Walt, http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/29/imaginative_creative_way_deal_with_syrian_crisis.)
Third, when, if at all, should the president seek Congressional approval for any action under the War Powers Act? Should he seek such approval, how will you (Tierney) or would you (Moulton) vote? If you do not believe the president needs Congressional approval, please explain this position clearly in terms of specific provisions of the War Powers Act, the U.S. Constitution, etc.
Thank you.
According to Huffpo she thinks the Presidet acted appropriately going to Congress and that Assad needs to be punished. Sounds like a lukewarm endorsement to me. I’m afraid that’s where most of the Democratic leadership will go.
If congress says “no”, he’ll say “I tried and the GOP wouldn’t let me”. If congress says “yes”, he’ll blow up a few targets and declare victory.
Nothing will change, he’ll have ruffled no domestic feathers, he’ll have looked “tough”, and the killing in Syria will continue or increase.
in yet another round of foreign policy kibuki theater.
He didn’t due this out of duty, when the UK vote lost he figured this would give him enough time to rally the party. With McCain getting the neocons, the four leaders behind it, it seems likely to pass. Especially since so few outspoken progressives have had the courage to simply say “no” publicly. How quickly Markey has forgot the bitter lessons of his Iraq vote, kudos to Steve Lynch for not forgetting his.