ON NOVEMBER 20, 1990, 45 House Democrats filed suit in federal court to prevent President Bush from taking military action against Iraq without congressional approval. “The president of the United States on his own cannot make that kind of determination,” said Rep. Ron Dellums of California, who initiated the suit. The issue became moot when Bush received congressional authorization to move against Iraq, but now some of the litigants, including Dellurns and House Minority Whip David Bonior of Michigan, are supporting President Clinton’s plan to send 20,000 troops to Bosnia. And one of them has moved to the White House: Leon Panetta, Clinton’s chief of staff, who now insists the president can dispatch troops without congressional approval.
They’re not the only Democratic phonies on the issue of sending American sold iers to foreign lands. Most congressional Democrats have overcome their aversio n to any American military intervention, anytime, anywhere, to back Clinton on Bosnia. There are non-hypocrites among them. Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin is one; a passionate advocate of lifting the arms embargo, he criticizes Clinto n’s plan. And Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut backs Clinton and also backe d Bush strongly in the Persian Gulf. But they’re exceptions. Most Democrats hav e morph ed into advocates of undiluted presidential authority to send troops.
Take Richard Gephardt, the House Democratic leader. In 1990, he was one of the chief opponents of giving Bush the authority to wage war. A few weeks before the air campaign began, Gephardt told CNN that if Bush had the temerity not to seek congressional approval, “the Congress has to reach for the only tool left to it, which is to cut off funding for the war.” In the past month, there were two House votes to bar funding for any troop deployment to Bosnia that did not have explicit congressional approval. Both resolutions passed handily. Gephardt voted against both.
On November 17, 1990, Gephardt urged caution in the Gulf. “I want to spend some time talking to Arab experts to try to figure out how the Arabs view this, to see if we can figure out what Saddam Hussein is thinking,” he said. Now Gephardt has lost interest in consulting experts. Just hours after Clinton’s Bosnia speech on Nov. 27, he declared that Clinton had convinced him “that this is the right time for America to act, and the right way to do it.” He did not counsel caution. “If America doesn’t lead the world,” Gephardt asked, “who will?” That’s also the thinking of Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, now at least. In the Gulf war, he cosponsored a resolution with Gephardt to stick with economic sanctions against Iraq and block Bush’s plan for military action. At the time, Hamilton was chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and fiercely advocated congressional authorization of any military action. In a last-ditch effort to thwart Bush, Hamilton asserted a few days before the air campaign: ” There are no guarantees that war will be quick and easy. It will cause casualties and heartache; it will split the coalition; it will estrange us from our allies; it will make us the object of Arab hostility . . . and it will not be easy to win once it is started.” That was then. Now he’s changed his tune. He supported Clinton’s June 1993 bombing of Baghdad (for which the president did not bother to seek congressional approval). More recently, Hamilton proudly announced the day after Clinton’s speech, “There is a moral imperative to act. If we fail to seize this opportunity to end the war, we risk renewed atrocities, a wider conflict, and thousands more shattered lives.” He didn’t mention congressional approval. Like Gephardt, he voted against both House resolutions. “When you are the commander in chief, you have the power to deploy troops,” he argued. “That’s fundamental.” What about casualties and the dif ficulty of keeping the peace in an explosive region? Not to worry. Hamilton now says the real risk lies in “sending U.S. troops to extract our allies from an expanding war, instead of sending U.S. troops to implement a peace.”
If there’s one Democrat who can usually be counted on to oppose American military ventures overseas, it’s Dellums. A veteran of the anti-Vietnam war movement, he signs his photos “Peace and Freedom.” He described the 1991 bombing of Baghdad as “an inestimable tragedy, one for which it will take us a lifetime to atone.” After Clinton announced he would be deploying troops and that he wouldn’t need congressional approval, many expected strong opposition from Dellums and maybe a lawsuit. Instead, Dellurns issued a statement supporting the White House: “The time may come when the nations of the world have developed better suited mechanisms and personnel to deal with peacekeeping. Until then, peace advocates must be responsive to those who would seek our help to end the violence that is consuming them.”
Consistency isn’t the hallmark of most Senate Democrats either. Consider Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. In the run-up to the Gulf war, he was almost slanderous about the Bush administration’s plan to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait. He charged Bush with “secretly moving to create the ongoing permanent Orwellian crisis” and dismissed the whole affair by saying “nothing large happened. A nasty little country invaded a littler, but just as nasty, country. ”
Given all that, Moynihan might have been expected to have trouble with the Bo snians, who hail from an equally “nasty” part of the world and follow the same faith as the dreaded Kuwaitis. But no. The senator invoked a higher justificati on for supporting a U.S. troop deployment: “The American interest is in interna tional law and order. . . . If we don’t do this, we will find something even ha rder the next time. . . . The First Armored Division [going to Bosnia], they’ ve been on the line since 1944. Why? Because we did nothing in the 30s, when th is sort of aggression began.” That would have been a pretty good argument for s upporting military intervention in the Gulf. But back then a Republican was pre sident. The same double standard goes for Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, on ly more so. He voted against Bush on Iraq and sounded alarms: “If you send in t hese troops and we end up with 10, 15, 20,000 kids coming bac k to this country in body bags . . . I’m not so sure you’re going to find a tremendous amount of support or approval for the president having taken that action.”
Today, he concedes he’s “not terribly enthusiastic about sending troops” to Bosnia but contends that “not to be supportive now would . . . raise far greater risks to our country, far greater risks to the most important strategic alliance in the world.” The troop deployment “may not work in the end, but I’d rather look back and say we tried.” Besides, Dodd added the other day, Clinton is merely “continuing what I would call the Bush doctrine . . . for conflict resolution in the 21st century.” I doubt Bush would agree.
by Matthew Rees
