‘Make No Mistake About It,
This Is a War’
U.S. ground troops are being sent to
Syria without congressional authorization. Why are so few members
speaking up?
By John Nichols
November 06, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "The
Nation" -
Congressman
Peter Welch has done his due diligence. He has studied the
circumstances on the ground in Syria and surrounding countries. He
has traveled to the region as part of a congressional oversight
trip. He has visited centers for refugees on the Syrian-Turkey
border.
The Vermont Democrat, who serves on the Subcommittee on National
Security, Homeland Defense, and Foreign Operations of the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has gone out of his
way to engage in debates, discussions, and inquiries regarding US
policy in the region.
So the congressman’s words should carry particular
weight when he discusses last week’s decision by President Obama to
put US troops on the ground in Syria. After the president—who once
declared, unequivocally, that “we’re
not considering any boots-on-the-ground approach” in
Syria—ordered several dozen Special Operations troops into Syria for
what The New York Times
describes as “the first open-ended mission by United States
ground forces in that country,” Welch said: “Make no mistake about
it, this is a war.”
It is not, however, a clearly declared or
authorized war.
As Welch observes: “The legal framework justifying
this war is loosely tied to the fumes of a Congressional
authorization approved in response to the 9/11 attack on America
over 14 years ago.”
That’s an absurd construct, argues Welch.
“A civil war in Syria did not exist 14 years ago.
ISIS did not exist 14 years ago. Neither the United States nor
Russia were conducting military operations in Syria 14 years ago,”
notes the congressman, who says it is time for Congress to focus on
the question of whether the United States should be engaged in a new
war in the Middle East.
“The biggest question raised by [deployment]
announcement is, ‘When will Congress finally accept its
responsibility?’” says Welch, who adds that “The Constitution is
clear that only Congress can authorize war.”
Welch is not alone in expressing concern about a
military intervention that is expanding in scope and character—in
Syria and in Iraq—without adequate approval or oversight from
Congress.
“I am deeply concerned by escalating mission creep
in Syria, especially since Congress has yet to debate the costs and
consequences of this military operation,”
says Congresswoman Barbara Lee, D-California, a longtime
supporter of the president who served as a Representative of the
United States to the 68th Session of the General Assembly of the
United Nations. “The Constitution is clear: the power to declare war
rests with Congress. We serve as the voice of the American
people—our actions in Congress should reflect that sacred
responsibility.”
Senator Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, decries the
decision to dispatch troops to Syria as “a strategic mistake.”
“The Administration’s announcement that it will
deploy Special Operations Forces into Syria to combat ISIL marks a
major shift in US policy—a shift that is occurring without
congressional debate—is unlikely to succeed in achieving our
objective of defeating ISIL and instead threatens to embroil the
United States in Syria’s civil war and could bring us into direct
confrontation with the Russian Federation military and Syrian
government forces,”
says Schatz. “In the 16-months since the United States began its
participation in the regional fight against ISIL, our military
involvement has escalated without a clear sense of how our
escalating involvement will achieve our strategic objectives. With
ISIL’s control of northern Syria, we cannot reasonably expect that
the deployment of Special Operations Forces would be limited in
scope or duration.”
This is a big issue, yet it has received scant
attention from media and political elites. As such, many Americans
are unaware of the seriousness, and the potential consequences, of
the Obama administration’s policy shift.
There should be no question that a congressional
debate is required—and needed. Americans should be brought into this
discussion, and the way to do that is by raising the issue in
Congress. The House and Senate should reject the flimsy excuse of a
14-year-old AUMF and vote on whether to authorize the growing
intervention that the administration is now implementing across Iraq
and Syria.
“Congress must act immediately to repeal the 2001
and 2002 authorizations for military force (AUMFs), which continue
to be used as blank checks for endless war,”
says Congresswoman Lee. “It is past time for our elected
officials to recognize that there is no military solution to the
problems in the region. Only a comprehensive, regionally-led
strategy that addresses the underlying political, economic,
humanitarian and diplomatic challenges can ultimately degrade and
dismantle ISIL.”
It is not certain that Congress would say “no” to
intervention of the sort that Obama proposes—even if there are
contingents on both the Democratic and Republican parties that
believe,
as Senator Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, does, that “the fighting on
the ground needs to be done by the people who live there.”
There are genuine divisions on this issue. “The
senator believes that the crisis in Syria will be solved
diplomatically, not militarily,”
says the campaign of Democratic president campaign of Senator
Bernie Sanders, while the campaign of Hillary Clinton
says the former secretary of state “sees merit in the targeted
use of special operations personnel to support our partners in the
fight against ISIS, including in Syria.”
This debate can, and should, be had on the
campaign trail.
But it must be had in
Congress.