[Peace-discuss] We need a Kamala Harris moment on Congressional War Powers

[Robert Naiman]

https://www.facebook.com/robert.naiman/posts/10158396480572656

I wish Bill De Blasio had been on stage last night for one single purpose:
to attack Joe Biden on Congressional War Powers.

Kamala Harris prepared her attack on Joe Biden well and delivered it well.
But the key reason that her attack was so devastating was that Biden was
totally unprepared for it. Not because Biden’s people didn’t see it coming,
but because Biden didn’t listen to his people. Biden thought, I’m Joe
Biden, I’ve got this, I should be myself. So that’s what he did. Joe Biden
was himself, and a bunch of Democrats were like, OMG. That’s Joe Biden,
when Joe Biden is himself? OMG. Kamala Harris showed him a plank, and he
gleefully walked off it with a song in his heart. She gave him a great
opportunity to expose himself, and he rose to the occasion.

If we want to end the wars, we need to do this to Joe Biden on
Congressional War Powers. There is no way that Joe Biden can prepare to
meet this attack, because there is no way that Joe Biden can become a
person who doesn’t believe with all his heart in Presidential war.

Joe Biden wants to run on having been Obama’s VP. But if he wants to take
credit for the good things that the Obama-Biden Administration did, then he
has to take responsibility for the bad things the Obama-Biden
Administration did. This is no longer a taboo topic. Kamala Harris attacked
Obama-Biden on immigration. So apparently we’re allowed to talk about this
now.

The Obama-Biden Administration did a terrible thing when it violated the
Constitution and the War Powers Resolution to bomb Libya in 2011. It was
terrible for the Constitution. It was terrible for our efforts to end the
wars and prevent new ones. It was terrible for people in Libya. It was
terrible for the region. It was a terrible precedent. It set loose fighters
and guns. It helped create the expectation that the U.S. would overthrow
Assad, which contributed massively to the devastation of the Syrian civil
war. It created the precedent that Trump is using now to claim that he can
bomb Iran without Congressional authorization, as I tried to warn the
liberals in 2011. I said to the liberals: if you support Obama bombing
Libya like this, a future Republican president will use this precedent to
try to bomb Iran. But of course, the liberals didn’t listen, because the
liberals would rather starve 85,000 Yemeni children to death than give up
their irrational attachment to “humanitarian war.”

But we’re in a new moment now, and Bill De Blasio’s performance at the
first debate proves it. Whatever else is true of Bill De Blasio, he got the
memo on Congressional War Powers. If you’re against torture, you’re against
torture for Al Qaeda terrorists. If you believe in habeas corpus, you
believe in habeas corpus for Al Qaeda terrorists. If you believe in the
First Amendment, you believe in the First Amendment for the Nazis and the
Communist Workers Party. If you believe in the Constitution and the War
Powers Resolution, you believe in the Constitution and the War Powers
Resolution for “humanitarian war.” If you don’t believe in a principle when
the going gets tough, then you never believed in the principle in the first
place. If you don’t believe in the Constitution and the War Powers
Resolution for Libya 2011, then the blood of 85,000 Yemeni children is on
your head, because there’s no way we can stop these atrocities if we can’t
force Congress to vote beforehand. If you leave it up to the President, if
you believe the President can do whatever the hell they want, whenever they
want, say whatever about it they want, then you gave away the store, and we
can hang up the project of trying to end U.S. atrocities by engaging U.S.
public opinion.

Joe Biden claims that he was right about Libya, in the sense that he was
against going in. Maybe so. But he was wrong about Libya when he accepted
the claim that it was Obama’s decision. It wasn’t Obama’s decision. Under
the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution, the decision belonged to
Congress. All history suggests that as long as we don’t get rid of
Presidential war, the warmongers will always eventually win, because it’s
too easy for the warmongers to manipulate the President, and it's too easy
for the President to manipulate everything else. If we want to end the
atrocities, we have to return the power to Congress.

I’m as sure as I’m sure that I have two feet that Joe Biden will never sign
up for this program. And that’s why we need a Bill De Blasio on the same
debate stage as Joe Biden.

===

Robert Reuel Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1
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