Does Congress have the power to preempt Bush strike on Iran?

i dont think it would be good diplomacy to have that resolution. The threat of attack is leverage, if you pass a resolution that you can't tattack, that obviously takes someleverage out during your negotiations. Even if Congress could do it, I doubt they would.

 

Of course, they can pass resolutions to do this. However, I don't think they will get enough votes to override a Bush veto. Not to mention the democrats have no balls to even make such a suggestion.

A war with Iran is inevitable if Bush wants it. There is nothing we can do about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution

Of course, it might be possible to pass this resolution if Bush really started this war. However, by that time, the war might have gone on for couple weeks with deaths of tens of thousands of Iranian civilians.

 

of course they have the power, you only have to look at the way Republicans forced Clinton to leave Somalia to find precedent.

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2007/01/republicans-and-congress-war-powers.html

When Bill Clinton was President, most of the country's leading Republicans did not seem to have any problem at all with Congressional "interference" in the President's decisions to deploy troops (really to maintain troop deployments, since President Bush 41 first deployed in Somalia). There wasn't any talk back then (at least from them) about the burden of "535 Commanders-in-Chief" or "Congressional incursions" into the President's constitutional warmaking authority. They debated restrictions that ought to be legislatively imposed on President Clinton's military deployments and then imposed them.

And Sen. McCain in particular made arguments in favor of Congressionally-mandated withdraw that are patently applicable to Iraq today. And he specifically argued with regard to forcible troop withdrawal that "responsibilities for that lie with the Congress of the United States." The Constitution hasn't changed since 1993, so I wonder what has prompted such a fundamental shift in Republican views on the proper role of Congressional war powers.

 

This is not a good example. We were in Somalia and fought several battles there already. For Iran, we are trying prevent an invasion from ever happening. I don't think there were any precedents like this.

 

Does Congress have the power to preempt Bush strike on Iran?

No, but they can impeach him afterwards.

 

Impeach him for what? He won't break any law if he bombs Iran for 60 days.

 

This is the most important thing. Congress MIGHT be able to do it, but it would be a complete disaster to do so as it would completely undermine US foreign policy, whether we agree with that policy or not.

 

Agree that the War Powers Act allows the President to deploy troops to respond to an emergency presently but Dionysus is correct that Congress could pass a resolution doing away with the War Powers Act and the Republican Congress had considered doing that very thing when Clinton was President. As you note they would have to override Bush's veto but there is a Constitutional problem too regarding the separation of powers and I highly doubt that the Roberts' Court would consider putting the Commander in Chief's power to deploy troops in response to an emergency under Congressional control Constitutional.

 

No, Congress does not currently have any power to stop him. Precedent under the War Powers Resolutions, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, and the Joint Resolution for Authorization of Use of Military Force give him any necessary and proper powers to take action against countries that harbor terrorists.

 

What does a law have to be constitutional anymore? It seems like the constitution can be interpreted however a law maker feels like interpreting it.

 

Joint Resolution for Authorization of Use of Military Force gives him power to act against countries involved with 9/11, which is the whole reason that 'W' and his band of legal gymnasts felt compelled to make up a link between Iraq al Qaeda and therefore 9/11.

Of course, since this president doesn’t seem to mind making stuff and breaking the spirit of the law up he can claim that some member of the 9/11 attacks had a cousin who once spent a night in Iran and later gave a bottle of Sunny Delight to one of the terrorists, thus effectively 'aiding the terrorist attack' on 9/11.

But I believe that if the President tries to do the 'relationship to 9/11' dance again with a Democratic Congress and his current approval ratings he would be impeached. If he had had his current pariah approval ratings and a Democratic congress when he finessed same issue with Iraq, he would have been impeached then, and in my opinion he would have deserved it.

The president seems to take an almost perverse pleasure in violating the spirit of the laws of the country when he isn't actually breaking them.

 

Also, I think technically they do have the power to stop him by repealing the War Powers Act. Once that happened, under my quick perusal of the facts surrounding the case, without the War Powers Act, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer would go from being an ally to being a foe.

 

I'm usually a lurker ,But since I had to write a brief bout this for my undergrad con law class on a hypothetical case with the exact same issue, I decide to come out underneath the rock for this.

What my group argued was that since Congress has the Constitutional power declare war, appropriate funds to the armed forces, and to make laws regulating the government of the armed forces, they are not given any authority constitutionally to limit executive power. By limiting Presidential authority in the War Powers Resolution, Congress is in effect putting an additional check on the Chief Executive, which they do not have the right to do. Within the War Powers Resolution, seizing control of the armed forces from the President in violation of his constitutionally assigned powers as Commander-in-Chief.

Even if the courts reestablish that the WPA is constitutional, the Authorization of Mil. Force., not only applies to terrorist of 9/11, but it also give the President power to prevent future attacks of terrorism against the US by any nation or organization.

Basically, unless the Roberts' Court address the current issue of the problem of separation of powers, we're screwed if Bush pulls something like this until 2008.

 

I apologize. I reread and you are clearly right and I am clearly wrong. It is I apologize. I reread and you are clearly right and I am clearly wrong. It is so obvious that I was embarrassed to have arrived a conclusion which was so clearly mistaken.

 

I'm going to assume the Youngstown case is being cited because of the criterion laid out in the concurring opinion of Justice Jackson, grouping practical situations into four categories by which to judge the validity of Presidential action.

If that's true, and you want to correspond this hypothetical case to one of those groupings in consideration of possible congressional action, then it probably falls into #2 or #3.

2. When the President acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain. In this area, any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract theories of law.


3. When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can only rely upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter.

In the end, the idea of inherent powers has as much (if not more) relevance to Presidential war powers as to any area of the national government. If he wanted to launch a preemptive strike against Iranian nuclear sites, he could; and any decent government lawyer would be able to convince the Supreme Court it was justified, whether it leaned conservative or not; and regardless, it would be a moot point.

I would think something as drastic as the repeal of the War Powers Act would make a President realize the kind of political suicide he'd be up against; but the failure of the North Koreans to live up to their treaty obligations (the best safeguard) struck in 1994 makes it hard to convince enough Republicans to support such a repeal or resolution sending the same message.

At the end of the day, this President has already mortgaged the immediate future of his party in an attempt to memorialize himself. The people surrounding him may be misguided, but they're not stupid. During this lame-duck period, all they should be thinking is "damage control" if they want any chance at being competitive within the next four years.

 

The law maker is the legislature while the Judicial branch interprets.

 

Some good points abnman, tacoma, and Otto:

What I think we need to be careful about is differentiating between the how the Youngstown ruling defined the separation of powers, the War Powers Act and the 9/11 AUMF because while related they don't necessarily apply to the same situations. Youngstown expressed that the President's use of power was limited in regard to the will of Congress but the Constitution recognizes that the will of Congress might not be specific and that its impossible to run a war through a legislative body. The AUMF takes the place of a declaration of war but even there it doesn't grant unlimited powers to the President and has within its language the basis by which the President can use military and other power. The War Powers Act recognizes that there are situations that may arise where the military force is needed before adequate time can be taken for a Congressional debate and authorization. Writing from memory here I think it allows the President to deploy a limited number of forces for 100 days at which time he has to go to Congress for authorization.

The situation with a strike on Iran would most likely fall under the War Powers Act as being an emergency like what Reagan used for bombing Libya. The Youngstown Steel idea of being limited by the will of Congress wouldn't matter until the 100 days were up. Bush could argue that after the 100 days that military action needs to continue and is already authorized by the AUMF to fight terrorism but that gets into the situation that Otto was talking about in regard to how that argument is presented and how convincing it is.

The War Powers Act to me is the key for whether Congress can stop a preemptive attack on Iran and IMO it says that Congress can't.

 

Since the title didn't say "legal power", let me give you guys another perspective.

While we as a nations of lawyers love to argue the legalities of things, the way power works is to propagates orders through the chain of command. The legality of commands can be used to convince people on the chain of command to carry out the order. But legality of commands is just one of the many ways to convince. Being on friendly term with the source of order is another powerful way to convince.

If the whole chain of commands is filled up with cronies of the source of order, the order can also be carried out. That's why Bush machine installed many cronies in all aspects of the government. And in an ambiguous case like this, the power of legality will be soft compare to cronyism.

If you are oppose to War on Iran, you should do your best to disrupt such an order, e.g. impeachment, etc. But if I am in the Vegas, I will have to put my bet on the Bush team.