Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war – President
Thomas Jefferson, 1805
One of the very highest priorities of our Founding Fathers in creating our Constitution was to develop a system of Constitutional law whereby it would be extremely difficult for a single individual to lead our country into an ill conceived war. James Madison, often referred to as the father of our Constitution, had a
great deal to say on this matter:
Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad… Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other…
War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war… No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
To chain the dogs of war, the Constitution has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war to the Legislature.
Yet… unfortunately… it has never quite worked out that way in our country.
There has been a tremendous amount of disappointment among anti-war Americans about the recent surrender by our Democratic Congress to Bush and Cheney’s Iraq War plans. I share that disappointment. And I also share in the struggle to try to make sense out of a situation that seems to defy common sense.
Yet, I think it’s important that we realize that the U.S. Congress has more than a two century long history of failing to exert its Constitutional authority to act as a check on the Commander-in-Chief’s ability to lead our country into war and keep it there. In saying that, I do not in any way mean to excuse our current Congress’ failure (thus far) to act forthrightly to put an end to this disastrous war. Rather, my aim in making this point is that this particular failure is by no means unique – and therefore, we ought to be looking for an explanation (which I admittedly do not have) in the history and culture of our nation, rather than solely in the deficient characters of our current elected Democratic representatives.
To make this point I would like to consider three previous wars that we have been involved in that are most similar to the current Iraq War: Our war against the Philippines, the Vietnam War, and the Contra war against Nicaragua. All four wars were terribly ill conceived on our part; they all had disastrous consequences for the people of the nations that we fought against; and they were all guerilla wars, where we played the part of an imperial power acting against the interests of a sovereign nation, and therefore were faced with a civilian population that hated us (or our proxies) and provided a great obstacle to our imperial goals.
The Philippine-American WarThe war and its precedentsThe United States rationalized its
declaration of war against Spain on April 19, 1898, on the unsupported allegation that Spain was responsible for
blowing up an American battleship (provocatively stationed outside of Cuba) and our desire to “liberate” the Cuban people from Spain’s tyranny. The war against Spain was short, and by December 10, 1898, President McKinley signed the
Treaty of Paris, which officially ended our hostilities against Spain, and which ceded Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the United States – at McKinley’s insistence.
Why would the United States insist on sovereignty over those three countries when their avowed purpose of the war against Spain was to liberate those people? Suffice it to say that there were businessmen pushing for U.S. control over those countries because of the commercial advantages that they would offer, and their were military men pushing for it for military strategic purposes (sound familiar?). In addition, President William McKinley was quoted as saying that, after debating the issue in his mind for some time, he woke up one night and received a message from God (sound familiar?)
saying that there was “nothing left for us to do but to take them all, to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them".
The Filipinos, unlike the Cubans and the Puerto Ricans, felt that they were in a position to fight the United States. They
declared independence on January 23, 1899, and twelve days later they declared war against the United States.
A long vicious
guerilla war ensued. Only after press censorship was lifted in 1901 did ordinary Americans get to learn what was happening. According to
a report in the
Philadelphia Ledger:
Our men have been relentless; have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people, from lads of ten and up, an idea prevailing that the Filipino, as such, was little better than a dog… Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to “make them talk,” have taken prisoner people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later… shot them down one by one…
Many more massacres and atrocities ensued. By the time that the new President, Teddy Roosevelt, declared the Philippines “pacified” on July 4, 1902, 4,373 American soldiers had died in the war, along with an estimated 16 thousand Filipino soldiers and 20 thousand Filipino civilians.
The role of CongressOn April 19th, 1898, Congress responded to President McKinley’s request for war against Spain by approving a joint resolution 311-6 in the House and 42-35 in the Senate.
Because of concern by some Congressmen that imperial ambitions were behind the motivation for war, the
Teller amendment was included in the resolution, specifying that the United States:
"hereby disclaims any disposition of intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island (Cuba) except for pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people."
Nevertheless, despite those sentiments, the Senate approved the Treaty of Paris, which ceded the Philippines to the United States, by a vote of 57-27.
The Vietnam WarThe war and its precedentsThough it is widely stated that President Kennedy initiated our involvement in Vietnam, the roots of our involvement in Vietnam precede Kennedy’s presidency by several years. It was John Foster Dulles, President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State and the force behind the U.S. overthrow of the democratically elected governments of
Iran in 1953 and
Guatemala in 1954, who initially decided to intervene in Vietnam. Though the
Geneva Conference Agreements, which officially ended the war between France and Vietnam in 1954, provided for general elections which were to bring about the unification of Vietnam, that was not acceptable to Dulles. Fearing a Communist victory in those elections, Dulles
intervened to prevent the elections from taking place and proclaimed an indefinite commitment by the United States to that effect – a commitment that Kennedy inherited.
After about two and a half years of propping up a corrupt South Vietnamese government in the cause of preventing elections from taking place, President Kennedy it appeared was having serious second thoughts about continued American involvement. He gave a
speech which contained the most serious peace overtures to the Soviet Union since the onset of the Cold War; and he began to make serious
plans for withdrawal from Vietnam. Many believe that these moves towards peace provided the main motivations for Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963.
Lyndon Johnson, shortly following his election to the Presidency in 1964, substantially escalated our involvement in Vietnam. The grounds for that escalation was prepared in August of 1964, when Congress, on the basis of alleged attacks by the North Vietnamese against U.S. naval vessels, almost unanimously approved the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the President “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against U.S. forces and to prevent further aggression in Vietnam.”
As in our war against the Philippines, most of the people of South Vietnam deeply resented our involvement there, which led to cycles of guerilla warfare against our troops, which we responded to with massacres and other atrocities. George McGovern, the anti-Vietnam War Democratic candidate for President in 1972, proclaimed numerous reasons for advocating complete withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam over a period of several months, including: The South Vietnamese people have a right to decide what kind of government they live under; the corrupt South Vietnamese government we supported had lost the confidence of the people of all parts of Vietnam; we were paying an awful price for the war in terms of lost lives and money; Nixon’s idea of “Peace with honor” was pure bullshit – There is no honor in having millions of people killed for no good reason; and, it had become obvious that we couldn’t win the war.
In the end, 58,000 American troops died in the Vietnam War, along with about two million Vietnamese. The cost to the U.S. was about $600 billion.
The role of CongressWith President Nixon claiming to be working towards peace, but with the war grinding on with no hint of success, on June 24, 1970, the Senate
repealed the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. However, that didn’t do much good, as President Nixon did not take that repealing as posing restraints to his license to continue the war.
Subsequently, the
McGovern-Hatfield Amendment to end the war was introduced. It was very similar to the recent attempt by Congressional Democrats to end the Iraq War, calling for the withdrawal of troops over several months. A major difference is that the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment didn’t even require a Presidential veto to defeat it, as it went down to defeat on September 1, 1970, by a vote of 55-39 in the Senate.
A few months later, on December 22, 1970, Congress passed the
Cooper-Church Amendment to a defense appropriation bill, which forbade the use of U.S. ground forces in Laos or Cambodia, but did nothing to end involvement in Vietnam. Nixon didn’t even feel compelled to submit to that relatively weak restraint, as he
admitted almost a year later to the presence of 30,000 CIA sponsored irregulars in Laos.
On June 22, 1971, the U.S. Senate passed a
non-binding resolution urging the withdrawal of all U.S. ground troops by the end of the year. Needless to say, Nixon felt no need to comply with that non-binding resolution.
Though the
Paris Peace Accords of January 27, 1973, specified the immediate end of American military activity in Vietnam, and though American troop withdrawal was completed shortly thereafter, Nixon was still threatening renewed military involvement in Vietnam pending his satisfaction with North Vietnam compliance with the peace accords. Therefore, Congress passed the
Case-Church Amendment, cutting off further funding for the war, on June 19, 1973, by veto-proof margins of 278-124 in the House and 64-26 in the Senate.
On November 7, 1973, Congress passed the
War Powers Resolution Act, which required the President to obtain the support of Congress within 90 days of sending American troops abroad.
Though the U.S. House began impeachment proceedings against Nixon the following spring, it failed to include Nixon’s illegal war activities, most importantly his
secret bombing of Cambodia, in its articles of impeachment.
The Contra War against NicaraguaThe war and its precedentsOn July 19th, 1979, a popular uprising by the revolutionary Sandinista Party
overthrew the repressive dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. The Sandinistas began reversing Somoza's devastation of the country with a program of land reform, social justice, and redistribution of wealth and income. Former members of Somoza's National Guards and other war criminals formed in opposition to the Sandanistas, and they became known as the Contras.
Supporting the Contras in their efforts to take over Nicaragua was one of the primary goals of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, despite abundant evidence of
repeated atrocities perpetrated by the Contras, including:
murder, the rape of two girls in their homes, torture of men, maiming of children, cutting off arms, cutting out tongues, gouging out eyes, castration, bayoneting pregnant women in the stomach, amputating the genitals of people of both sexes, scraping the skin off the face, pouring acid on the face, breaking the toes and fingers of an 18 year old boy, and summary executions. These were the people Ronald Reagan called "freedom fighters" and "the moral equal of our founding fathers."… The human rights organization Americas Watch concluded that "the Contras systematically engage in violent abuses…. so prevalent that these may be said to be their principle means of waging war."
In addition to the Reagan administration funding the Contras, it used the CIA to assist them in their carnage, including the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors. By the mid-1980s, the Contra war had produced 14,000 casualties, including 3,000 dead children and adolescents, and 6,000 children had become war orphans.
The role of CongressThe
Boland Amendments were a series of laws passed by Congress beginning in 1982 for the purpose of cutting off funding to the Contras and other support of their war by the Reagan administration.
The Reagan administration basically ignored orders of Congress, continuing to fund and support the Contras through various means, most notoriously by means of selling military weapons to Iran in return for assistance in obtaining the release of American hostages in Lebanon – a scandal that became known as
Iran-Contra.
Investigations were later held into this scandal, with consequent
indictments of a long list of high level Reagan administration officials, most notably including the Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, who was later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush. However, neither the President nor the Vice President was ever fully investigated in connection with Iran Contra, nor did Congress ever attempt to impeach them for their role in the scandal.
Comparison with the current war in IraqThere is tremendous disappointment today among large segments of the American people with the failure of our Congress to aggressively stand up to the Bush administration to exercise their constitutional authority to stop our disastrous war in Iraq. Trying to make sense out of this and understand the reasons for this failure in the face of a clear mandate from the American people and the clearly expressed desire of Congress to end the war, we have speculated on numerous different explanations, including: Democrats want us to continue the war; they want to gain the favors of their corporate backers; they are cowards, or too averse to risk; it is a cynical political ploy to discredit Republicans; or, they have a complex and intelligent political strategy in mind.
When I first thought about writing this post my intent was to try to find examples from past Congresses that our current Congress could learn from to exert their authority to stop a disastrous, immoral and highly unpopular war. However, I was unable to find such examples. In fact, I believe it is fair to say that our current Congress’
recent vote to establish a timetable for withdrawal,
vetoed by George Bush, represents the closest a U.S. Congress has ever come to stopping a war.
The three wars that I discuss in this post are all very similar to the Iraq War. Although in all four wars we claimed to be fighting largely for the benefit of the people of the country we fought, in each case we were ardently hated by the people whose benefit we claimed to be fighting for. Consequently, we faced an intensely hostile civilian population, which greatly reduced our chances of success, and which resulted in terribly repressive measures taken against the civilian population, with the consequent loss of anywhere from tens of thousands (Philippines) to millions (Vietnam) of innocent lives. In none of those wars was there the least bit of a valid excuse for our invasion of their country (though the Iraq War probably comes closest to this because in that case, at least there was no benevolent government in place prior to our intervention.)
Although there was some opposition to the Philippine-American War from individual Congressmen at the beginning, once the war got underway there was little or no opposition.
Spurred by massive opposition against the Vietnam War from the American people, Congress took various actions, such as a nonbinding resolution to limit the war, but it never actually successfully voted to end the war or cut funding until all the American troops were gone – so they could no longer be accused of “not supporting the troops” when they cut funding. And when the U.S. House of Representatives proceeded with impeachment against President Nixon, they made the grave mistake of failing to include the abuse of his war powers among the articles of impeachment.
Congress did cut funding for the Contra War, but it didn’t have to worry about being accused of “not supporting the troops” (since no official American troops were involved), and even then the President ignored Congress’ orders, and Congress failed to act to hold him accountable for that grave breach of his oath to protect our Constitution.
Partly or largely because of all those failures, our people are today faced with the worst and most lawless president in the history of our nation. Clearly Congress has a mandate from the American people to end this war, as they also have a Constitutional duty to make every effort to impeach and remove from office a President and Vice President who have shown nothing but contempt for Congress, the American people and our Constitution from the day they took office. Yet, with regard to ending the war, the lack of strong precedent for that action in our country probably gives them pause with respect to the perceived political risk. And with regard to impeachment they probably anticipate a hostile reaction from our corporate news media if they attempt to go that route.
None of this provides a valid excuse, in my opinion, for our Congress’ failure to aggressively pursue these vitally important goals and duties. But I believe that it does provide some
explanation, which we the American people would do well to consider as we try to figure out what’s going on and how to deal with it.