Three days after the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed a resolution authorizing the president to use military force against those responsible.
Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat who represents California’s East Bay region, was the lone member of either the House or Senate to vote against the resolution.
“In granting these overly broad powers, the Congress failed its responsibility to understand the dimensions of its declaration,” she wrote. “I could not support such a grant of war-making authority to the president; I believe it would put more innocent lives at risk.”
For that act of bravery and conscience – not to mention a construing of the Constitution as strictly as a hero of the right such as Justice Neil Gorsuch might construe it – Lee received insults and death threats.
Yet the concerns she expressed endure. They arose again on Tuesday, when the president took to Twitterto tell Russia to “get ready” for missiles fired at Syria by the U.S. in retaliation for what appears to have been an attack on civilians using chemical weapons.
In the wake of that tweet, Lee, now joined by three of her colleagues, including two Republicans, issued a statementurging the president to seek authorization from Congress before using military force against Syria.
“The Constitution clearly gives Congress, not the executive branch, the power to authorize war,” they wrote. “Any use of force against Syria requires approval from Congress first.”
The move follows a similar statement last June by members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who said that U.S. airstrikes in Syria exceeded the authorization passed in the wake of 9/11.
In 2013, at Lee’s request, the Congressional Research Service compiled a memorandum that listed the uses of military force taken pursuant to the 2001 authorization. They included the use of such force in 10 countries (a number that now stands at least at a dozen after deployments in Niger and Syria), detaining prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and engaging terrorist groups both “on the high seas” and “around the world.”
In short, the resolution produced a forever war that has strayed from its justification to avenge the 9/11 attacks and now stands on questionable legal footing.
President Barack Obama recognized the problem implicitly in August 2013, when, after being presented with evidence of a chemical weapons attack by the Syrian regime against its own people, he refrained from taking military action until Congress could be heard.
Obama explained his decision as follows:
“[H]aving made my decision as Commander-in-Chief based on what I am convinced is our national security interests, I’m also mindful that I’m the President of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy. I’ve long believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
A month later, the prospect of a diplomatic solution that called for the Syrian government to hand over its stockpile of chemical weapons spared Congress what some members feared would be a tough vote.
Still, the decision by President Obama to seek authority from Congress marked a move to harmonize the use of military force with the Constitution.
In September 2013, when a vote by Congress on the use of military force in Syria seemed imminent, Donald Trump warned President Obama against attacking Syria. “If you do, many very bad things will happen,” Trump tweeted.
Fast forward to last Sunday, when Trump blasted Obama for failing to take military action against Syria. Though the tweets induce whiplash, they establish that, as president, Trump has about as much regard for the Constitution as he does for consistency.