The Discerning Texan

When Murtha revealed the strategy, the House Republican staff quickly dispatched e-mails to GOP members that list Democrats who had campaigned last year against restricting support for troops in the field. The message asked: "Will they side with Jack Murtha and their leadership in Washington, or with the promises they made to their voters?"

But only eight such Democrats, including six newcomers, were listed. Rep. Nick Lampson, who returned to Congress from Tom DeLay's conservative Texas district, had said (according to the Associated Press) that "he opposes withdrawing until the Iraqi army is capable of controlling the country." Lampson declined to talk to me when I said I wanted to ask him about Iraq. Freshman Rep. Brad Ellsworth won election to a swing district in Indiana by saying ( according to the Evansville Courier & Press) that "he would not support any measures that would cut funding for forces in Iraq." Ellsworth said he was "too busy" to talk to me after I said the subject was Iraq.

The president is commander-in-chief. That is not just a title; it is an assignment of constitutional duties that may not be performed by any other branch.

Congress can deny him funding; it cannot exercise commander-in-chief functions. Rotating troops and assigning materiel for military engagements is an executive function -- just like deciding which target to hit, which hill to take, and which captives to detain.

If Congress wants to end the war, Congress can end it by de-funding it. Then the president has to bring everyone and everything home -- and members of Congress can then be politically accountable to the voters for the decision to abandon the battlefield before the President believed the mission was completed. Congress, however, cannot manage, much less micro-manage, the exercise of commander-in-chief authority in connection with military engagements that are authorized either by Congress or under the President's inherent Article II authority. It is for the president alone to exercise that power.

And what if the United States is invaded, or if our forces and interests are attacked overseas (as, for example, they have been repeatedly since 1996, and as they are currently being attacked from Iran and Pakistan, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan)? The Supreme Court has held since the Civil War era Prize Cases that the president has not only the authority but the duty to respond to provocations against the United States, regardless of whether Congress has acted. But would a president be expected to wait to dispatch forces until the Murtha two-year lay-off has run its course?

In The Federalist No. 73, Hamilton explained that the Constitution armed the executive with vigor and irreducible powers in order to defend against “the propensity of the legislative department to intrude upon the rights, and to absorb the powers, of the other departments.”

Smart guys, the Framers.

Labels: Democrat Sabotage, Iran, US Politics, War strategy