It is clear to many people—even
many Congressmen—that President Obama’s decision not to seek
Congressional authorization for his plan to fight ISIS is blatantly
unconstitutional. So why is no one pressing the president about
that? Don’t national lawmakers possess, at the very least, some
basic desire to hold onto their legitimate powers?
It appears that they don’t—or rather, political considerations
trump all else.
According to BuzzFeed’s John Stanton, most legislators were
perfectly happy not voting on ISIS matters, for fear that a vote
could come back to haunt them in future election cycles:
“There are a lot of members who’d just rather just not vote on
this and let the president to shoulder the [political] weight of
taking us to war,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said Tuesday. Schiff
is one of a handful of lawmakers who has pushed for a vote this
month on a new Authorized Use of Military Force legislation to
cover the administration’s campaign against ISIS. …The perils of a vote for lawmakers are clear: Giving Obama
authority could be a major liability in future elections; Hilary
Clinton famously took major heat during the 2008 presidential
campaign for her support of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. If
Congress failed to pass authorization and a major attack were to
happen in the homeland, lawmakers could see an even more severe
backlash.
So even though legislators of both political parties remain
deeply skeptical that Obama’s policy of launching continuous
airstrikes against ISIS and arming the Syrian rebels will
accomplish any long-term goal, the president will basically always
get his way on contentious foreign policy matters, since voting
carries political risks.
(Keep in mind that the CIA has been
discreetly arming the Syrian rebels all along, even though the
vote to do that specific thing only took place yesterday. The CIA
now believes such a strategy is “doomed to failure.”)
Democracy: Good for a laugh, if nothing else.
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