"How you go to war"

"How you go to war"

by digby

“The most important” part of Rand Paul’s assessment of “questions of war,” the Kentucky senator told The Daily Beast this fall, is “how you go to war.”

No. Not really. The most important question is whether you should go to war, not how. Dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's is great but it cannot substitute for the right judgement. And assuming that's going to come from the US Senate is laughable.

The closest we've come in a very long time to the congress objecting to a president's desire to go to war was the proposed intervention into the civil war in Syria which, as it happened, the president didn't really want to do anyway. We don't know how it would have come out but the British voted against it and there was at least a rare chance that the US Congress might have gone that way too. Still, I doubt it. All they had to do was gin up the propaganda and there probably would have been enough support to back the president.

Prior to that, the last time there was a serious debate in congress (as opposed to a kabuki dance) was the resolution for the first Gulf war. It was a lively debate and the vote was close. But it passed and the war was a huge success and every presidential aspirant who made the call to vote against it was shut out of the nomination because of it. (It has been argued that the opposite happened to Hillary Clinton in 2008 --- her vote for the war worked against her although it doesn't seem to be hindering her at the moment.)

Let's just say that politicians are often fighting the last war vote but there's little reason to believe that they are likely to obstruct any war the president wants to fight. Yes, the opposing party always objects mightily when the president exercises his alleged unilateral power to wage a war. It makes for great political theatre. But when push comes to shove the likelihood that they would actually stop him is very, very slim.

Just so there's no confusion about the outcome of this particular process, Rand Paul's plan is to have congress declare war on ISIS:

In a draft of the resolution obtained by The Daily Beast, Paul states that “the organization referring to itself as the Islamic State has declared war on the United States and its allies” and that ISIS “presents a clear and present danger to United States diplomatic facilities in the region, including our embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, and consulate in Erbil, Iraq.”

The Obama administration has justified the bombing campaign against ISIS by claiming that it is enabled by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force in Afghanistan, passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. Paul’s resolution would terminate the latter and place an expiration date on the former, one year after the passing of his resolution.

Perhaps most surprisingly, Paul’s resolution will allow for limited use of boots on the ground “as necessary for the protection or rescue of members of the United States Armed Forces or United States citizens from imminent danger [posed by ISIS]… for limited operations against high value targets,” and “as necessary for advisory and intelligence gathering operations.”

“No. 1: Always go to Congress. We can’t do things unilaterally. This used to be the president’s position in 2007, when he ran for office.”

In an interview with The Daily Beast in September, Paul said he was against the idea of U.S. forces on Middle East soil. “I don’t think there needs to be any American soldiers over there on the ground,” he said. “I don’t mind helping them through technical support, through sophisticated intelligence, drones, Air Force, etc.”

He added: “The people on the ground fighting these battles, going hand-to-hand with ISIS, need to be their fellow Arabs and those who, I think and hopefully do, represent civilized Islam.”

Doug Stafford, a senior aide to Paul, said the senator has not flip-flopped: “He doesn’t believe we should send a bunch of troops in to start a ground war. But he has always said we have an obligation to defend people in the region. The declaration is tailored to allow for this.”

So there you have it. But at least the "process" will have followed. And that's what counts.