President Obama pushed Congress to assume more responsibility for what happens next in Iraq and Syria with a primetime address Wednesday night.
It was the latest in a string of back-and-forths between the two branches, which have been treating the power to make decisions on war like a hot potato — or maybe a live grenade.
While President Obama said in his speech that he believes he has the power to broaden his military campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, he said he lacks the so-called Title 10 authority to arm and train carefully vetted Syrian rebels and pressed Congress to quickly vote to provide it.
“I believe we are strongest as a nation when the President and Congress work together,” he said. “…I again call on Congress to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters.”
Just one day before, after a meeting with Congressional leaders to discuss Obama’s plans, the president told the lawmakers he had all the authority he needed to take the fight to the extremist terrorist group wherever they are.
“The speech included a schizophrenic view of congressional input for war-making,” Jens Ohlin, a law professor at Cornell University told the Washington Examiner. “Obama seemed to be saying that congressional authorization isn’t necessary but that he’s asking for it anyway. He’s trying to have his cake and eat it too.”
Obama has always held conflicting ideas about who has the authority of war-making, Ohlin argues. Now Obama believes military action is needed to defeat ISIS forces so he’s asking for a very limited authority — to train and arm the Syrian rebels — because he wants it to pass.
Just one year ago, when Obama was reluctant to follow up on his red-line threat against Assad’s use of chemical weapons, the White House sent Congress a much more broadly worded resolution to intervene in Syria’s civil war with airstrikes. Congress, in a war-weary mood at the time, voted it down.
There’s a good legal argument for asking for Congressional authority to train and arm a foreign military, Ohilin said. Namely, he doesn’t want to end up finding money in the budget for something else and using it to bolster the Free Syrian army and then stand accused of an operation akin to Iran-Contra, when President Reagan sent money to anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua without congressional approval.
But the political motivation for getting some Congressional skin in the anti-ISIS game may be even more powerful.
Providing weapons and ammunition to Syria’s rebels is a high-risk endeavor. Many opposition forces are closely aligned with terrorist groups, such as al Nusra and have close ties to al Qaeda, who regularly plot attacks against innocent women and children in Syria, and have transported bombs into Iraq to kill Americans there.
Even worse, if the fight against ISIS strengthens Assad’s position, the U.S. could end up emboldening the regime to commit more atrocities.
Despite a chorus of Congressional critics clamoring for tougher and swifter action against ISIS, there are plenty of reasons for lawmakers to shy away from any type of legal buy-in to extending the fight into Syria and let Obama own his military decisions alone.
Even with new poll numbers showing wide support for airstrikes in both Iraq and Syria, both Democratic and Republican leaders have no idea how individual members’ votes will affect their re-elections. Democrats generally oppose the expansion of military operations and Republicans, depending on their constituents, are deeply divided.
Congressional reticence over the August recess stood in stark contrast to the uproar three years ago when Obama’s decided to consult the United Nations rather than Congress before launching U.S.-led airstrikes in Libya.
In a speech to the American people, Obama said that military action in Libya would last days, not months but it ended up continuing in some form for nearly seven months.
Although presidents routinely ignore the War Powers Resolution, it bars military action to continue for more than 60 days, with a 30-day extension allowed to facilitate troop withdrawal, without Congressional authorization or a declaration of war.
In this case, the president has been very clear that the fight against ISIS will continue for months and likely for years.
“It has spread from Syria into Iraq and could possibly continue spreading into Turkey and Jordan,” said Louis Fisher, a war powers expert at the Constitution Project, which seeks to limit presidential power to wage war without congressional consent.
“Anything that lasts a couple of years, you’re going to do that without Congressional authority?”
Before Assad crossed the president’s red-line and airstrikes in Syria became a possibility, Obama delivered a speech at the National Defense University in which he called for an end to endless war against terrorism and said he wanted to work with Congress to change the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that allowed the U.S. to target those who “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11 attacks.
This week, Obama administration officials cited the 2001 document as their primary authority for broadening the campaign against ISIS.
“The president is confident he has the military authority to take the military action that he has decided to order,” a senior administration official told reporters Wednesday, noting that he only needed additional Congressional approval for arming the Syrian rebels.
Until Wednesday when Obama started requesting more authority from Congress, Senate Majority Reid, D-Nev., said he too believed the president had all the authority he needed to expand his anti-ISIS mission. Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, agreed as far as targeting the group in Iraq but said it is “questionable” whether that authority extends to airstrikes against the group in Syria.
Boehner, though, didn’t seem eager to bring a vote before his conference.
Reid also seemed reluctant, saying Wednesday he would back Obama’s renewed push for authority to train and equip Syria rebels even while continuing to assert that the president has all the authority he needs to act against ISIS.
“The president has tried to get that form us and we should give it to him,” Reid said. “That is one way of helping build an international coalition.”
A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the strongest voice so far pushing for Congress to grant Obama broader authority to fight ISIS, said the three Senate Committees have passed bills over the last year that would authorize and fund arming and training Syrian rebels but Reid has yet to act on them.
He also pointed to a pledge from Obama during his West Point speech in late may saying he would work with Congress “to ramp up support for those in the Syrian opposition” and noted that the White House never followed up by sending operational plans for that mission to Congress.
