Obama Asks for Congressional Authorization for an Attack on Syria

This is something that I did not see coming.

Presidents Nixon have been outright hostile to the application of the war powers act, so I expected that his speech yesterday would be to announce the start of 2-3 days bombing.

Instead, he announced that he would be submitting a proposal for a war powers act authorization:

President Obama put on hold Saturday a plan to attack Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons, arguing that the United States had a moral responsibility to respond forcefully but would not do so until Congress has a chance to vote on the use of military force.

The announcement puts off a cruise missile strike that had appeared imminent, a prospect that had the region on edge and stoked intense debate in the United States, where many dread getting dragged into a new war.

Obama did not indicate what he would do if Congress rejects the measure.

Lawmakers are scheduled to return from recess on Sept. 9to begin what is sure to be a contentious debate about the risks of injecting the United States into a conflict in which it has few reliable allies and enemies on both sides of the front lines. The Senate will hold committee hearings on the proposed strike this week, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced Saturday.

The decision to seek congressional approval for what the administration has said would be a short, limited engagement was a remarkable turn one day after Secretary of State John F. Kerry delivered an almost-prosecutorial case for military intervention. Obama made the decision Friday night following days of agonizing deliberations with members of his Cabinet, according to administration officials.

I think that Obama is aware of the politics of the situation here, and felt a need to distinguish himself from Bush's foreign policy.

I think that his calculus is that Congress won't be willing to deny the request and will grant him the authorization of use of military force (AUMF), because of the political consequences of the vote.

I think that this is a miscalculation. On the Sunday shows, members of Congress expressed a lot of skepticism about the AUMF.

In particular, they complained that it:

Leading lawmakers dealt bipartisan rejection Sunday to President Obama’s request to strike Syrian military targets, saying the best hope for congressional approval would be to narrow the scope of the resolution.

From the Democratic dean of the Senate to tea party Republicans in their second terms, lawmakers said the White House’s initial request to use force against Syria will be rewritten in the coming days to try to shore up support in a skeptical Congress. But some veteran lawmakers expressed doubt that even the new use-of-force resolution would win approval, particularly in the House.

“I think it’s going to be a very tough sell,” said Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), who is often a key crossover Republican in compromises with the White House. For now, Cole said he is “leaning no” on approving any use of force against Syria.

His remarks came after a more than 2½-hour classified briefing that drew 83 lawmakers to the Capitol, GOP aides said. They flew in from across the country on 24 hours’ notice for a rare Labor Day weekend meeting. The briefing, run by five senior national security officials, began the administration’s all-out effort to win support for what Obama has said would be a limited strike against military targets to punish Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime for carrying out a chemical attack.

White House officials have less than two weeks to secure backing in the House and the Senate, which will not formally return from their regular end-of-summer break until Sept. 9. They are expected to then immediately begin debate on military authorization, with votes by mid-September.

………

Obama’s allies said the first order of business will be to work with the administration to redraft the resolution, which was sent to Capitol Hill on Saturday night and barely filled one page. It had no prescriptions for what type of military action could be carried out or its duration.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the dean of the Senate and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told reporters that the resolution is “too open-ended” as written. “I know it will be amended in the Senate,” he said.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), a former chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said, “That has to be rectified, and they simply said in answer to that they would work with the Congress and try to come back with a more prescribed resolution.”

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a former Senate staffer who inspected chemical weapons attacks by Saddam Hussein’s government against its own citizens in Iraq in the 1980s, said he will push to add language that would limit the length of the mission and prohibit putting U.S. troops on the ground in Syria.

I think that the old Clinton hands remember how the AUMF vote in 1991 largely cleared the way for Bill Clinton in 1992, because the Representatives and Senators who voted against it were ruled out as a Democratic Presidential nominee by the conventional wisdom of the time.

I think that this is wrong.

First, we won't have the sort of conclusive military victory that we had in Kuwait

Second, this is a different time, and the political equation has changed.  The current resident of the White House got there largely on his credibility of his opposition to "stupid wars."

Voting against the AUMF, or voting to narrow it, is likely to be a requirement for any Congressional Democrat who wants to run for President in 2016.

I thing that there is a significant possibility that Obama will be handed the same sort of defeat that David Cameron did in the UK.

(AUMF request after break)