The politics of defense

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Larry,

It's hard to think of a tougher question than how our democracy should address war and peace, but that's what our editors have teed up for us this morning. Specifically, how should Congress -- which ostensibly represents the people -- decide these questions, and whether it should take an active or passive view of its oversight role during war.

I think the framers got the fundamental principle right -- power must be shared between the president and Congress. But there's more than "checks and balances" in play here. Institutionally, I think the president is best suited to command the military and order its actions. And Congress is best able to raise armies and legislate for them, and declare wars and levy taxes on the people to pay for them. In theory, at least, the people vote for war through Congress, because they will be the ones who ultimately shoulder the burden, whether through taxes or national service.

Unfortunately, this system has broken down. Congress authorized the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as if it were signing a blank check. It continues to fund the war with irresponsible supplemental appropriations bills pushed by the White House. Nearly all legislative activity now assumes the status quo and concedes power over the ultimate question (whether to wage war or not) to the president, as if the original authorizing acts were irrevocable grants of permanent war power. To be fair, the two armed services committees have conducted exhaustive oversight of how the armed forces are fighting, what they need to fight better and when certain objectives will be met. These issues will likely be the focus next month of Army Gen. David H. Petraeus' report to Congress on Iraq. But these are all lesser issues -- they miss the fundamental question of whether the nation should be fighting at all. If Congress never asks that question, then we the people will never get a say in answering it.

So why doesn't Congress do more? I think it has much to do with the fact that America isn't really at war; only its military is. Fewer than 1% of Americans serve today in uniform. Our military (including the reserves) increasingly makes up a discrete and insular caste, separate from the rest of civil society. Military families don't form a coherent constituency capable of pushing Congress on this issue. (The Walter Reed Army Medical Center story was an exception, but it took a front-page series in the Washington Post to focus American attention on years of neglect and underfunding at veteran and military hospitals.) And, regardless of what they tell pollsters, I don't think Americans care enough about this war to push Congress on it, maybe because it doesn't affect them in any meaningful way.

In the final analysis, congressional action does little to affect the actual course of the war. All of the hearings, legislation, oversight requests and public advocacy work on the margins, like very small rudders attempting to steer a very large ship. Meanwhile, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on, with the White House pursuing whatever course it chooses nearly unfettered by any democratic constraints. We need more from Congress, and not just more of the same. Congress must use its fundamental powers to decide the big strategic questions -- Should we fight? Why? At what cost? -- and opt for war only if the nation is ready and willing to undertake that commitment. Americans shouldn't have to wait every four years for a presidential election to get a say on questions of war and peace.

Phillip Carter practices government contracts law with McKenna Long & Aldridge in New York. He previously served as an Army officer for nine years, deploying to Iraq in 2005-06 as an embedded advisor with the Iraqi police in Baqubah.

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Phil is correct when he says that the framers got it right when they required that power must be shared by the president and Congress, especially when it comes to taking the country to war. He is also correct that the system is broken, but he does not put enough of the blame on Congress for taking us into wars unnecessarily. This becomes clear when we analyze how Congress gave the Johnson and Bush administrations blank checks when it came to authorizing two disastrous wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

In 1964, on the basis of alleged attacks by the North Vietnamese on U.S. Navy ships, Congress gave the administration a blank check that led to a decade of war in Southeast Asia by passing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. But in its haste to prove its patriotism, Congress did not take the time to analyze the tapes from the Navy ships involved in the incident.

The late Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.), one of the two senators to vote against the resolution, told me that a naval officer had tipped him off about the tapes, but the secretary of Defense told him there was not enough time to bring the evidence to Washington. Morse and Sen. Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska), the only two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, were defeated in the next election.

Similarly, in October 2002, when President Bush asked for a resolution to support the war against Iraq, the Democrats, who then controlled the Senate, wanted to get the issue out of the way before congressional elections, so they moved quickly. Moreover, only a handful of senators bothered to read the whole classified National Intelligence Estimate before they voted. Had they done so, these legislators would have realized that the case for going to war was not a slam dunk. In fact, the senators who read the entire NIE voted against granting Bush the blank check. Moreover, the Senate also voted down an amendment by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) that would have required the president to come to Congress before the actual invasion.

Phil is correct to say that only the military is at war, not the government and the American people. But that is not the reason that Congress does not do much to affect the course of the war. During the war in Vietnam, when we still had a draft and hundreds of thousands of people were protesting against the war, Congress did not act. It only put funding limitations on what could be done in Vietnam after President Nixon signed the peace agreement with North Vietnam ("peace with honor," he called it) in January 1973.

Congress must realize that once it gives the White House permission to go to war, there is not much it can do to stand in the president's way. Cutting off funds while hundreds of thousands of men and women are in harm's way is unrealistic. Next time, Congress needs to read the whole NIE or talk to the ship's captain.

Lawrence J. Korb, assistant Defense secretary in the Reagan administration, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a senior advisor to the Center for Defense Information.

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