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US Presidents on Presidential Power
Tod Landis writes "Responding to George Bush's statement that he will preserve executive power for his "predecessors", I've assembled a
collection of quotes from those predecessors. Most saw executive power differently..."
These quotes seem to suggest it's unconstitutional for anyone other than Congress to declare war.
Congress still has (and did have) the right to declare war, and they turned it over to Bush to use at his disposal. (In theory, at least, I don't think he actually declared anything.)
Why not a collection of quotes about how Congresspeople are lemmings?
gears? we don't need no stinking gears.
This article has nothing to do with "executive power".
The President has the power to write "Executive Orders". These were meant to be used as quick action rules to act on certain situations before congress and the Senate could debate and decide on a proper strategy (because committees are slow).
Congress has been trying to restrict those abilities and THAT'S what Bush is defending.
WAR POWERS (which W is NOT talking about in his quote) are a still hotly debated topic. Executive Orders can be used to facilitate combat (as has been done with Iraq) but the President has combat powers above and beyond the Executive Orders so restricting those doesn't necessarily stop the other.
Bush is not the first to have done this. Clinton did it with Bosnia, Bush Sr. did it with Panama, Reagan did it with Grenada, etc;
The whole power structure of wars, waging wars, military action, etc is still a hotly debated topic in congress and this article does no justice in bringing out the real issues.
They did not tell Bush to go after anyone. They gave them the authority to declare war if he felt it was needed. If he did, then he had to justify going to war to congress.
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:)
From http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/11/iraq.us
The resolution requires Bush to declare to Congress either before or within 48 hours after beginning military action that diplomatic efforts to enforce the U.N. resolutions have failed.
Bush also must certify that action against Iraq would not hinder efforts to pursue the al Qaeda terrorist network that attacked New York and Washington last year. And it requires the administration to report to Congress on the progress of any war with Iraq every 60 days.
They wanted a diplomatic solution before war and they wanted to make sure the invasion wouldn't disrupt the war on terror.
This happened on Oct 11, 2002. A month later The UN passed resolution 1441 with tough new arms inspections on Iraq.
Dec 7, 2002 Iraq submitted its 12,000 page report that says they had no weapons.
Jan. 16, 2003 UN inspectors discover 11 undeclared empty chemical warheads in Iraq.
Feb. 22, 2003 Hans Blix orders Iraq to destroy its Al Samoud 2 missiles by March 1.
March 1, 2003 Iraq begins to destroy its Al Samoud missiles.
(kinda like telling your kid "I'm going to count to 5" and watching then scurry when you say FIVE!"
Feb. 24-March 14, 2003 The US tried and failed to get UN support to invade Iraq.
March 19, 2003 US invades Iraq.
As you can see, it took 5 months from the time Bush was authorized to invade to the time he actually did invade. If he had invaded within a couple weeks of the authorization then it would be a totally different story. I'm not trying to say it was right or wrong to invade, but the facts say that Bush did have the choice whether to invade or not.
Whether it was right or wrong won't be known until the history books are written that our grandkids and greatgrandkids use in school.
Truman presided over the first major armed conflict that did not involve a declaration of war, by convening a UN security council meeting and immediately committing troops to the conflict. This after the secretary of state declaring the Korea really did not fall into the US's "sphere of protection" in the east-asian region.
Truman also first got the country involved in Vietnam, after the French got over their heads in the conflict and asked the US for help. By 1954, 80% of the war costs were borne the the US.
Vietnam became a major conflict during Johnson's administration, as he reinstated the draft and dramatically increased the commitment of troops.
WWII was the last US conflict that involved a formal declaration of war by congress. IMHO, it should not be OK for a president to commit troops to ANY conflict outside of our own borders without a declaration of war from congress. Don't expect ANY president to follow this doctrine.
The Eisenhower quote is interesting, as he was the last president that recognized deploying troops without congressional authority was not intended by the constitution. He was the LAST president to recognize this (and probably always will be).
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia