Battle for War Powers
by William Norman Grigg

When the Clinton Administration announced shortly after last November's election that American troops would remain in Bosnia until at least 1998, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) professed startled outrage. "I've never seen anything like it," groused the senator, "a press report that we're going to keep 5,000 men and women overseas without any consultation with Congress."

McCain's anger was ironic, given the fact that in December 1995 he told ABC News that he had "no choice" but to support President Clinton's unauthorized deployment. McCain even co-sponsored a resolution with Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole expressing support for the unconstitutional deployment and mandating that the U.S. arm and equip the Muslim-led Bosnian government -- thus setting the stage for the protracted deployment that McCain now professes to oppose. Bob Dole was even more explicit in his capitulation to the deployment, asserting on the Senate floor, "We have the responsibility [to support troop deployments], whenever the President of the United States, whoever that may be, gives his word to the world community."

The McCain-Dole resolution passed on December 13, 1995, the same day that the House voted down a resolution sponsored by Representative Bob Dornan (R-CA) that would have cut off funding for the Bosnia venture. During the debate over the Dornan measure, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) was AWOL, prompting California Republican Dana Rohrabacher to complain that Gingrich had been avoiding a confrontation with the Administration on an issue of constitutional importance. But it diminishes Gingrich's complicity in the Clinton Administration's unconstitutional militarism to say that he has merely avoided a fight. In fact, the Speaker and the GOP leadership have actively abetted Bill Clinton's usurpation of Congress' war-making powers.*

On June 7, 1995, the GOP-led House narrowly voted down a bill, sponsored by Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL), which was intended to repeal the Executive-limiting War Powers Act. Unlike the Dornan amendment, the Hyde bill received the personal attention of Gingrich, who gave the measure a ringing endorsement in the closing speech of the debate. Republican freshmen who had been propelled into the House by a wave of anti-Clinton revulsion must have been nonplussed to hear their Speaker urging them to "increase the power of President Clinton.... I want to strengthen the current Democratic President because he is President of the United States."

The remarks of Congressman Hyde were similarly shocking. Hyde had apparently discovered a previously undisclosed constitutional amendment re-assigning the power to declare war from the Legislative branch to the Chief Executive. "I think it is a fact of modern history that declarations of war are gone," Hyde pontificated. "I think they are anachronistic.... Instead what you do is you call it a police action, as we did in Korea, or you call it something else, but you do not formally take that giant leap of declaring war."

If Congress were to disapprove of a particular military excursion, Hyde assured his colleagues, "We have the untrammeled authority to unappropriate, disappropriate funds. That is the key; and that makes us the king of the hill." Six months later, when given an opportunity to disappropriate funding for Bill Clinton's unconstitutional Bosnia occupation, the GOP-led Congress took a dive.

Nor was the GOP leadership disposed to offer principled opposition to the Administration's plans to deploy an unspecified number of American troops to a Canadian-led UN mission in Zaire. Mr. Clinton may soon give his "word to the world community" to send American troops to police the Golan Heights, or -- in fulfillment of a recent request by Yassir Arafat -- the West Bank and Gaza. Other military opportunities beckon elsewhere in the Middle East, as well as in Northern Ireland and the former Soviet Union. American troops are also engaged (without uniform insignia) in UN-approved "de-mining" activities in Laos, special forces are conducting "operations other than war" in Sri Lanka, and Americans remain stationed under UN authority in Saudi Arabia, where they are subject to lethal terrorist attacks. Speaking of the proliferation of UN-mandated "operations other than war," Representative Lee Hamilton (D-IN) insists that although the "American people have some doubts about this ... this is the kind of intervention that we are likely to see more of in the future. The Congress will have to adjust to this, and so will the Pentagon."

Work of the Lord?

Why will the "Congress have to adjust" to this extra-constitutional military regime? According to outgoing Defense Secretary William Perry, it is because the Administration claims its authority from a higher source than the Constitution. During a Thanksgiving meeting with U.S. soldiers serving in Bosnia under NATO command, Perry declared that the UN-authorized occupation force is "doing the work of the Lord." Perry did not deign to explain how the Lord chose the United Nations Security Council as the instrument of his will, or how the UN's NATO subsidiary -- which is presided over by Spanish Marxist Javier Solana -- fits into this "divine" scheme. Most importantly, he failed to explain how the Administration's "heavenly" mandate managed to bypass Congress entirely.

Granted, Perry's statement was a facile blasphemy deployed as a rhetorical flourish. However, this is not the first time that supporters of UN-mandated "peacekeeping" missions have employed such language to justify the usurpation of Congress' constitutionally assigned war powers; as we will see, similar conceits abounded during the congressional debate over passage of the United Nations Participation Act (UNPA) in December 1945. The UNPA specifies, "The President shall not be deemed to require the authorization of the Congress" to make American troops and military assets available for use in military ventures authorized by the UN Security Council -- as if Congress could surrender its constitutional power to a foreign entity.

Since UNPA was passed more than 50 years ago, Congress has never carried out its constitutionally mandated role of declaring war -- yet Americans have died in undeclared wars in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf, and have been dispatched in UN-authorized invasions of Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda. All of this fulfills a dire 1945 prediction by Representative Clare Hoffman (R-MI), who warned his colleagues during the UNPA debate that the measure would require Congress to surrender "at least a portion, not only of our sovereignty, but of our freedom of action, and be bound by the decision of the Security Council."

During that debate, several representatives suggested that the UN represented the fulfillment of Christ's teachings. Representative Howard Buffett (R-NE) pierced the dense fog of sanctimony by pointing out that "it was probably the first international police force of all times that crucified the lonely Nazarene. It was the Roman legions that were in this land foreign to their own that crucified the lonely Nazarene whom we revere as the founder of Christianity." Far from advancing the sacred cause of Christianity, Buffett continued, the creation of a UN military would lead to "the spectacle 2,000 years later of an international police force crucifying Christianity that the lonely Nazarene died for years ago." Whatever damage the UNPA eventually does to Christianity, it has done immense damage to America's constitutional system. Representative Frederick Smith (R-OH) pointed out that the UNPA "strikes at the very heart of the Constitution. It provides that the power to declare war shall be taken from Congress and given to the President. Here is the essence of dictatorship, and dictatorial control over all else must inevitably tend to follow."

Presidential Directives

Bill Clinton has been enchanted with the dictatorial war-making powers surrendered to the Executive by Congress, and he has sought to systematize those extra-constitutional powers in two secret presidential decrees: Presidential Decision Directives (PDDs) 13 and 25. While neither of these documents has been made public, portions of PDD-13 were leaked in the press and a 15-page "unclassified summary" of PDD-25 has been made available by the Administration.

According to the New York Times, PDD-13 envisioned "an expanded role in United Nations peacekeeping operations that would include having Americans serve under foreign commanders on a regular basis." Opposition from the public and Congress prompted the Administration to re-tool the directive into PDD-25, which (according to the Administration's summary) establishes a framework for making "disciplined and coherent choices about which peace operations to support" and "Defining clearly our policy regarding the command and control of American military forces in UN peace operations."

Furthermore, while PDD-25 states that "the President will never relinquish command authority over U.S. forces," the summary explicitly states that a transfer of authority to foreign commanders may occur on a "case by case basis." Granted, serving under the present occupant of the White House -- a veteran of the communist-controlled anti-Vietnam war movement who expressed a generational "loathing" for the military -- is an abiding indignity to self-sacrificing military personnel. However, being compelled to wear UN insignia and serve under foreign command is an even greater affront, and the Administration's eagerness to court-martial Army Specialist Michael New illustrates the seriousness of its intention to consummate such a betrayal of American servicemen who are oath-bound to serve the U.S. Constitution.

First Tool of Tyrants

One unavoidable effect of war or the threat of war, Alexander Hamilton pointed out in The Federalist, No. 8, is that it "will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free." It is for this reason, notes West Point history instructor Wesley Allen Riddle, that "If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, then certainly, war is the first tool of tyrants." As documented elsewhere in this issue, the Clinton Administration's lust for foreign military adverturism is matched by its appetite for domestic tyranny, and both of these impulses spring from the same source -- a contempt for the Constitution.

Alexander Hamilton observed in The Federalist, No. 69: "The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces ... while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies -- all which, by the Constitution ... would appertain to the legislature." Hamilton later elaborated in the first Pacificus essay, "In this distribution of powers the wisdom of our Constitution is manifested. It is the province and duty of the Executive to preserve to the Nation the blessings of peace. The Legislature alone can interrupt those blessings, by placing the Nation in a state of War."

The constitutionally ordained mission of the U.S. military is a simple one: It is to protect the freedom and property of American citizens. It is not to engage in "nation-building," "peacekeeping," "peace enforcement," "operations other than war," or "stabilization" missions, nor is it to provide mercenaries for the UN or its subsidiaries. Our military exists, as Douglas MacArthur famously declared, to win America's wars -- constitutionally declared wars fought for constitutionally sound purposes.

Take It Back

Congress must take back the war-making powers it has surrendered to the Executive branch. One promising approach would be to append amendments to all military appropriations bills denying funds to all military missions not specifically approved by Congress. Such measures would de-fund ongoing unconstitutional deployments, as well as prevent future deployments on a country-specific basis (Northern Ireland, Zaire, the Golan Heights, etc.). Provisions could be made in such measures acknowledging the inherent authority of the President to use our armed forces to repel "sudden attacks" (a function recognized during the Philadelphia debates).

Another possible approach would be to propose resolutions (in either house) or joint resolutions (in both houses) emphatically enunciating Congress' exclusive authority to declare war and to "make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces" (Article I, Section 8); the resolutions would also point out that the President is Commander in Chief of the armed forces "when called into the actual service of the United States" (Article II, Section 2), rather than a monarch who can, of his own volition, commit troops overseas. While such measures are purely hortatory in nature, they would place the issue of the President's imperial pretensions before the public in a dramatic fashion. Perhaps the most important initiative would be the repeal of the UNPA and decisive action to compel the Administration to make public PDD-25, using whatever legal means necessary -- including, perhaps, the threat of impeachment for misfeasance of office.

Shortly after election day, House Speaker Gingrich stated that while the 104th Congress was the "confrontation" Congress, the 105th would be the "implementation" Congress. Thanks to Gingrich's treacherous leadership, the GOP-led House avoided an overdue confrontation over the Executive's usurpation of congressional authority concerning matters of war and peace. That confrontation must occur in the 105th Congress if America is to arrest the surrender of its sovereignty and its decline into tyranny.

* Although the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare (not make) war, the debate at the constitutional convention makes clear that the choice of wording was intended merely to permit the President to repel sudden attacks without violating the Constitution, not to deny the Congress war-making powers.

Source:   January 6, 1997 issue of The New American