Presidential Options and Foreign Policy : Clinton rightly, but narrowly, wins a key congressional test

Fortunately the Senate leaders who worked with the Clinton Administration to prevent Congress from curtailing the President’s options in Somalia were successful. At issue, it seems to us, were the prerogatives of the President as commander in chief.

Now of course there is reason for at least a little optimism in Mogadishu. Mohammed Farah Aidid has released his two hostages, U.S. Army helicopter pilot Michael J. Durant and a Nigerian soldier. Their freedom and the recent cessation of hostilities raise hope that U.N. peacekeeping operations will go smoother.

Still, Americans have grown uneasy over U.S. participation in the U.N. mission. If Clinton in his Oval Office address to the nation last week had failed to reflect that growing unease, he would have been asking for, and perhaps deserving of, a full-scale congressional counterattack to clip his wings. But he gave every indication to the contrary. Indeed, he outlined a sensible, dignified course of action to end the job in Somalia.

Even so, many in Congress reacted negatively, and in part that reflected the President’s decision to dispatch about 5,000 more soldiers and Marines to Somalia. That struck some politicians as inconsistent. But it was the right thing to do.

America must not pull out of Somalia as if in full retreat, or without protecting those troops who remain there from new attack. The wind-down and pullout need to be orderly and safe. To provide that security, the President ordered an additional deployment that had been desperately wanted by the U.S. military commander in Somalia.

At stake was not only the Somalia mission--which started as a humanitarian effort to feed starving people and then mysteriously evolved into something like an urban guerrilla war in Mogadishu--but the President’s ability to conduct foreign policy.

Fortunately, on this issue the President had some powerful allies. Sens. George J. Mitchell, Bob Dole and Sam Nunn worked to defeat efforts that would have mandated a pullout sooner than the President’s deadline of March 31.

However, the week before last the House slashed peacekeeping funds by $300 million in an effort to breath down the Administration’s neck and limit Clinton’s options. That’s constitutional--but still it raises questions.

For as commander in chief, the President requires ample, though not unlimited, leeway and discretion to conduct foreign policy. While answering to the American people, and to their surrogates in Congress, the President also needs a little maneuvering room. Not every decision can be vetted in advance by a congressional subcommittee or caucus.

If last week Clinton had asked for the moon--for a major troop buildup in Somalia, for another year or two--Congress would have been justified in rejecting such a commitment. Instead, the President proposed a sensible way out, taking not more than six months--and maybe much less. It’s our hope that the mission can in fact be wrapped up even more quickly. For all of the tragedy and casualties, many Somalians have been fed and many lives have been saved from starvation and disease. Above all else the American effort has been honorable and commendable. It was worth doing right, and it is worth finishing right.

In any event, Congress should not crowd him the President more than it has already. It is in the national interest for Clinton to be viewed abroad as the strong executor of American foreign policy. It can’t really work any other way.