Congress Continues to Sidestep Major War Decisions

The recent exchange of words between House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Leon Panetta, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, concerning detainee interrogation techniques reminds me of just how spineless some members of Congress can be when it comes to taking a stand on what they do and why they do it.

Today, tucked inside the pages of a regional newspaper was a short article about a Rutgers University professor who just lost his case in Federal Court. The professor had sued to have the 2003 invasion of Iraq declared unconstitutional. He claimed that only Congress has the right to declare war. He is, of course, correct.

Pelosi’s squirming about what she knew concerning alleged torture techniques and this lawsuit vividly underscores that most members of Congress will do whatever it takes not to commit one way or the other about do-or-die decisions – the most notable of which is war.

Ever since 1950, the U.S. has fought three major conflicts and is now fighting two– and not a single one of them with a declaration of war from the Congress: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq I, and Iraq II. For political reasons that emit a malodorous smell, Washington’s U.S. legislators of those wartime periods sidestepped their responsibility on the question of declaring war. They went along with mere “authorizations” or “resolutions.”

One might think that declarations of war are only for the warlike. You know – those right-wing nuts. But the real warlike action of Congress in those circumstances was to throw the baton from Capitol Hill to the White House, thereby abdicating its Constitutional responsibility on this most extreme of issues.

Since the Korean War began in 1950, any President with enough moxie can apparently arm-twist Congress to his obeisance. Any wonder that President Barack Obama is now able to increase war-zone troop levels seemingly at will?

Blame it on God, or the Republicans

Monday, as my wife and I were driving north from Potomac, MD, about 15 miles from the center of the Capitol Building in D.C., I tuned in C-Span radio to get a live feed of the debate taking place in the House of Representatives. The lower house was debating the famed “bailout bill” which was defeated later that afternoon.

Radio, when used in this manner, presents events with surprising clarity. There are no Wolf Blitzers to paraphrase what happened and to tell you what you should think about it. Most TV talking heads like to spoon feed us with selected video clips tailored to their own views. Listening to an event in real time radio, uninterrupted and unvarnished, gives the listener a wholly different look: it’s called reality.

At one point in the deliberations last Monday, a congressman who arose to speak out against the proposal concluded his comments with this ending, “Duty is ours. Outcomes belong to God.” I could think about that for weeks before I could even begin to decipher what in blazes he was talking about. Could it have been something like this: “Well, I’m going to vote ‘no’ on this bill, and God can figure out what to do next.” It’s a pretty sick dude who would put the consequences for the sub-prime mess squarely in God’s lap.

Especially since the record shows that Congress, through its willful inaction, is largely responsible for ignoring oversight of the financial markets and, in particular, for not reining in the run-away lending habits of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Furthermore, Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker, didn’t do herself or the process any good when, before Monday’s debate, she stood in front of reporters and pronounced in accusatory tones that Republicans who didn’t attend a previous bipartisan caucus were “unpatriotic” for not having been present.

If Republicans had attended that meeting, it would have been a slick trick, since Democrat Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, later confirmed that he had been so busy that he simply forgot to invite members of the opposing party.

Pelosi got a free pass from the media for that insult, because the brief news conference in which she fired the “unpatriotic” label against her opponents received scant, if any, TV coverage.

If you like, you can view Pelosi’s brief comments at, http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/pelosi_calls_republicans_unpatriotic/

As I wrote before, we all deserve much better than this from our representatives on “both sides of the aisle,” as they like to intone on Capitol Hill where, sometimes, I think the inmates run the asylum.