Over time, the president’s executive power has dramatically increased in cases of emergency and war. One such case is that of George W. Bush and his stance of preemptive strikes on Iraq known as the Bush Doctrine. The doctrine was met with much support, however, caused much controversy later. The Bush Doctrine, although allowed, was in violation of the Constitution and lacked approval from congress. Although the use of preemptive strikes was allowed due to lack of clarity in the constitution regarding presidential power, it was technically an act of war that was not approved by congress. However, although not approved by congress, the preemptive strikes were viewed as a necessary evil by the American Public and the Bush Administration. …show more content…
However, critics of the Bush doctrine point out the unilateralism shown by the Bush Administration. Essentially saying that if you weren’t with America, you were against it. After 9/11, much of the constraints and treaties that held back American interventionism were peeled away. Dolan says that “the Bush administration’s strong ambivalence toward multilateralism deprived international institutions the necessary powers to respond to nontraditional security issues such as conflicts over natural resources, public health and infectious diseases, international crime, and environmental degradation (The Bush Doctrine and U.S. Interventionism, …show more content…
One such concern was the way the Bush Doctrine took military power away from congress and the way it was becoming a tool for only the president’s use. The article the Bush Doctrine by Gerry Warren sums up this tension: “Under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress alone is granted the power to declare war. But under Article II, Section 2, the President is designated as the Commander in Chief. This historical tension in the Constitution is the natural by—product of a checks—and—balances system of government (The Bush Doctrine, Warren).” In 1973, congress passed the the War Powers Act. This was used to limit the president’s ability to send U.S. Troops into combat without explicit congressional approval. The article states that “no President has ever recognized the law and conceded he was subject to it. Each has instead merely informed the Congress 'consistent with' the Act of the military action he was taking, effectively rendering the Act without meaning (The Bush Doctrine, Warren).” With the new environment of warfare, the tension between congress and the president will become worse due to the way warfare has changed in an increasingly digital
The poor drafting of the WPR since the sections of the War Powers Resolution does not mention for example any procedures or what the congress can do when the president choose not to comply with the resolution. In addition the Congress unwillingness to enforced it over the years made it unsuccessful to be fully functional, that is why the United States Presidents had exploited some faults in the War Powers Resolution to undermine it, however the Congress, has the absolute powers to enforce it yet they did not, and so the WPR came through ups and downs due to its disadvantageous text and vagueness and resulted in ongoing tug of war in the Congress itself between the House and the Senate (Teacher. Law, 2013). If we look to the main function behind
This limited the president from essentially “declaring” war by deploying troops at their own whim. With the War Powers Resolution the president must notify Congress within forty-eight hours that they have mobilized troops, after which the troops can stay deployed for sixty days without Congress’s authorization. The president is
The constitution is quite vague and often needs defining. The War Powers act, while primarily insuring collective judgment, also provides a necessary definition for the war powers. The war powers are split between the two, and the only provision directly concerning the matter in Article II of the Constitution is that the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces. What does that entail? If the president could just freely use the troops with no respect for congressional authority, he would never find the need to seek a congressional war declaration, which would be entirely to his advantage and allow him to act unilaterally, which is definitely not how our framers intended our government to work.
Though I agree with what the act it trying to accomplish because Congress in trying to stay in control of the power to declare war and limit the President’s power to declare war. I honestly feel that power is too much power for one person such as the President to control. I would hope in the future that Congress passes a more effective War Powers Act that the President will have to follow. One of the Presidents that has violated the War Powers Act was President Bill Clinton when he got our military involved in Kosovo. President Clinton didn’t receive Congress’s approval to get involved in the conflict in Kosovo, in fact they voted against it several times.
The questions of whether or not the President has authority to use the military without congress first having declared war has proven to be a great source of conflict throughout history. The confusion comes from the different interpretations of the clauses. Since the Korean War, it has been accepted that the executive powers are that “The president has the power to initiate hostilities without consulting Congress” (libertyclassroom.com). This is often misinterpreted and has been used to expand executive authority and essentially make war without a congressional declaration of war. Perhaps the first example of this misuse of power dates back to the presidency of John Adams.
*Sole power to declare war Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution grants Congress sole power to declare war. There have been many occasions where Congress has clashed with a presidential deployment of military forces in the absence of congressional consent. Presidents Johnson and Nixon deployed military forces in Vietnam in the 1960s without prior congressional approval, as did the first President Bush in Iraq in 1990 and President Clinton
It is a civil responsibility for the citizens to ensure that out commander in chief does not take advantage of the power he holds. The government has made people dependent they lure their political ideologies through mass media that is bias therefore communicating only what they want the public to know. Actions taken by previous and current president have affected the trust the people the political ideology they have in the government, “ The decline in public trust among Americans is striking, public trust in government has declined and Americans are now more likely to feel that they can do little to influence the governments’ actions”
Question: Was Wilson Right in Passing the Espionage and Sedition Acts? To what extent is it acceptable to limit a citizen’s civil liberties during wartime? In April 1917, America declared war with Germany.
Moe and Howell offer compelling reasons as to why unilateral action is even a concern. They point to the combination of constitutional ambiguity in the level to which presidents are able to act. The multitude of statues, clauses, and loopholes give the executive room to take action in a number
In regards to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the main objective of the act was to limit the ability of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement purposes, but little to no success they were used as a security detail according to White House Reports on Hurricane Katrina, sociological journals, and books ranging from Militarizing the American Criminal Justice System (Kraska, 2001) to Acts of God (Steinberg, 2006), (Farmer, 2011). Especially after Hurricane Katrina; it was a prime example of how and why a states needed to be restored with law and order after a disaster hit raising concerns on the President’s legal authority to send active duty military personnel into a disaster area with permissible functions to protect
How much power the president has to act alone in matters involving national security has been an ongoing topic of
This case illegally limited the President 's energy to evacuate selected authorities, on the grounds that in the wake of following administrative civil argument of the First Congress in 1789, which managed the elucidation of the president 's arrangement power, Chief Justice Taft concluded " that the power to remove appointed officers is vested in the President alone"(Butler, 2015, P.1). As indicated by Taft, to deny the President that power would not permit him to "discharge his protected obligation of seeing that the laws be reliably executed"(Butler, 2015, P.2). Likewise in the Constitution, it is communicated
The main purpose of the act was to have the president and congress approach war efforts with “collective judgement,” yet the act itself seems to allow the president to bypass congress just as how presidents Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon did in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The act was supposed to correct the errors of such wars, but it really does not address the issue of powers between the executive and legislative branches effectively. In essence the president can declare war in the emergency when the United States is under attack, such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and the Pentagon however, he is restricted from actually enacting war, meaning he can only say that there will be war, but he cannot start organizing and sending troops to hostile countries without the formal consent of congress. Therefore, the war powers act attempts to decrease the president’s power to enact war, but it violates the constitution and bypasses congressional authorization for war by permitting the president to send troops to hostile countries for 90
An argument that is made is the notion of Congress not having enough time to deliberate and declare war. What if the country is suddenly attacked? Is it fair for the country to sit on their hands and wait for them to make up their minds when action needs to be taken immediately. The argument of a state of emergency is the loophole that the presidents over time have used to their advantage. Schlesinger says of the Cold War-era presidency, “The imperial presidency was essentially the creation of foreign policy.
A lot of this changed when President Bush adopted The National Security strategy of the United States. As outlined in this position paper, U.S. foreign policy rests on three main pillars: a doctrine of unrivaled military supremacy, the concept of preemptive or preventive war, and a willingness to act unilaterally if multilateral cooperation cannot be achieved. Bush argued that the new policy was necessary to prevent he proliferation of weapons of mass destruction among rogue states and terrorist groups. Criticism against the doctrine accused it of leading the United States to act arrogantly saying that it is likely to encourage the production of weapons of mass destruction and thereby jeopardizing the international cooperation essential to hunt down terrorist