SFRC planning hearing on War Powers Resolution and Libya
Congressmen are not happy about the White House’s new argument that the Libya intervention doesn’t rise to the level of "hostilities" and therefore doesn’t come under the jurisdiction of the War Powers Resolution. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking Republican, sent a letter to chairman John Kerry (D-MA) on Thursday morning ...
Congressmen are not happy about the White House’s new argument that the Libya intervention doesn’t rise to the level of "hostilities" and therefore doesn’t come under the jurisdiction of the War Powers Resolution.
Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking Republican, sent a letter to chairman John Kerry (D-MA) on Thursday morning asking for a hearing on the matter and Kerry responded that he supported the idea, a Lugar aide told The Cable. Lugar wants the State Department’s top lawyer, Harold Koh, to testify. June 28 is the likely date for the hearing, the Lugar aide said.
SFRC spokesman Frederick Jones told The Cable that no firm date has been set, but that Kerry was working on it.
"The Foreign Relations Committee has debated the Libyan action at several hearings over the last two months. The committee held a hearing on the War Powers Resolution last Congress. In conjunction with Sen. Richard Lugar, the Committee’s ranking Republican, Chairman Kerry is working to schedule a hearing later this month to address the issue," said Jones.
Suffice it to say that Lugar is not happy with the administration’s claim that the War Powers Resolution does not apply to the Libya intervention.
"The Administration’s position is both legally dubious and unwise. The United States is playing a central and indispensable role in military operations that have no end in sight. The Administration estimates that the cost of these operations will exceed $1 billion by September," Lugar said in a statement on Thursday. "Military operations of this significance, with far reaching consequences on our military, security and relations with other nations, require the clear support of the American people. For this reason, our Constitution provides that powers related to the use of military force are shared between the President and Congress."
In a conference call with reporters on Wednesday afternoon, White House Counsel Bob Bauer said that the administration will argue that military intervention in Libya is not subject to that law, due to the limited nature of the U.S. role in the conflict.
"Our view is even in the absence of the authorization we are operating consistent with the resolution," Bauer said in response to a question from The Cable. "We are now in a position where we are operating in a support role. We are not engaged in the any of the activities that typically over the years in War Powers analysis has considered to constitute hostilities within the meaning of the statute."
Other senior Republicans who aren’t buying that argument include House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Republican John McCain (R-AZ), who said on Thursday that "The administration made an announcement that will strike most of my colleagues as a confusing breach of common sense."
But while Lugar is against the military intervention in Libya, McCain supports it. However, his efforts with Kerry to craft a resolution endorsing the action have yet to surface in Congress. Meanwhile, 10 House members are suing the administration under the War Powers Resolution, and various efforts to defund the Libya war are underway in the lower chamber.
"The result of all this, I hate to say, is plain in the actions of our colleagues on the other side of the Capitol in the House," McCain said. "The accumulated consequences of all this delay, confusion and obfuscation has been a wholesale revolt in Congress against the administration’s policy."
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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