WASHINGTON — The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday is scheduled to debate the War Powers Resolution and whether or not President Barack Obama has gone beyond the intent of the law, after the House voted last Friday to rebuke the president for failing to stay within the law.
A number of experts say the complications inherent in the War Powers Resolution and its foggy wording could complicate efforts of American forces in Libya.
Congress passed the War Powers Resolution after the Vietnam War, overriding a veto by President Richard Nixon, to keep the president more accountable to Congress when deploying troops. It requires the president to get congressional approval for engaging in hostilities that last longer than 60 days.
The law “continues to be a potential subject of controversy” according a Congressional Research Service report by Richard F. Grimmett because “presidents have continued to commit U.S. Armed Forces into potential hostilities, sometimes without a specific authorization from Congress.”
Since the bill’s passage, 111 presidential reports, including Obama’s report on Libya, have been filed to Congress under the War Powers Resolution. Only one mentioned the word hostilities — a word, according to Grimmett, originally substituted for armed conflict because it was broader in scope. The broad nature of that word is now causing complications.
The Obama administration has said that since there is limited danger to personnel and the United States has taken a supporting role to NATO, the armed forces are not engaged in hostilities. On Friday the House of Representatives passed a bill disagreeing.
“People can argue endlessly about how much danger is enough danger,” said University of Texas law professor Robert Chesney.
“This kind of technical parsing of language is what people like to criticize as lawyering in a negative way,” said Chesney. “If that is in fact the right statutory meaning, we should apply what that statutory meaning is.”
The leaders of other nations’ forces that are engaged in Libya say it’s clear their forces are engaged in hostilities. French President Nicholas Sarkozy lashed out at outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, saying “France and Britain, with their allies, for the most part, are doing the work” in Libya.
Chensey also noted that a clause in the War Powers Resolution complicates things even further.
“There’s a provision in the statute that says when foreign forces are under U.S. personnel command, that can count as introduction into hostilities,” Chesney said.
NATO, an international organization, is in charge of leading Operation Odyssey Dawn and the commander of the Libyan operation is Canadian. But the admiral in charge of NATO forces is American.
“The language they used is command of foreign forces, and it’s kind of hard to get around that language,” Chesney said.
A bill introduced to the Senate by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz, would give Obama authorization for continued limited use of force for a year, effectively ending the War Powers Resolution debate. The support of McCain and other Republicans for the bill, coming up for debate four days after House Speaker John Boehner guided his rebuke of Obama through the House, highlights the split in the Republican Party over support for NATO actions in Libya.