Congress on the sidelines

Former Senator Jim Webb [D-VA] says there has been "a breakdown of our constitutional process." Time and again in recent years, presidents have taken unilateral actions sending armed forces abroad and concluding "binding" agreements with foreign governments -- all without the participation, much less support, of Congress.

"Congress is mostly tolerated and frequently ignored," he writes. But Webb blames lawmakers more than the chief executive for this sorry state of affairs. As the title of his piece indicates, what we have here is "congressional abdication" of its proper constitutional role.

I agree with that conclusion, though not with all of Webb's particular criticisms. I'm not as bothered as Webb is about presidential actions in Libya in 2011; there is was Congress that failed to pass any measure either supporting or opposing or limiting U.S. military operations. Nor do I view the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq in 2008 as a measure requiring 2/3 Senate approval; earlier SOFAs with other nations were routinely accepted as executive agreements.

But on the broader issue of war powers, Congress has repeatedly failed to step up to the plate. No wonder presidents have ignored lawmakers when they tried to enter the contest. By the way, the Congressional Research Service has a new report detailing the many precedents for congressional limits on military operations, just as I did in Congress at War. All it takes is political will.

short-sighted and eventually blind

There's a sad story from PBS's Nova about our dying weather satellites. By 2016 the United States is likely to lose its only remaining weather satellite in polar orbit. Our whole system is failing because of a host of bureaucratic and budget problems. NOAA, NASA and the Pentagon are all to blame, but NOAA most of all. Each agency tried to pass the buck. Actual coordination was minimal. Future programs were delayed when budgets got squeezed. And some satellites failed during launch. As a result, we are likely to have greatly reduced weather data in just a few years, with avoidable human and commercial costs as a result.

stretching the law

Since the 9/11 attacks, the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly argued that the legal authority for most of their counter-terrorism activities, including drone operations and targeted killing and the growing U.S. military presence in Africa, is the law authorizing the use of force enacted a week after the Twin Towers fell [Public Law 107-40].  As an article in the Washington Post today reveals, however, that law covers only people and entities directly linked to the al Qaeda attackers. The law has been stretched to cover actions against "offshoots" of Osama Bin Laden's group. This situation also creates incentives for American counter-terrorist planners to find links to al Qaeda, however, tenuous, to justify military actions.

This ain't the way to run a war. It would help if Congress passed some new measure, but any such law would have to confront difficult issues of defining adversaries and placing some limits on the nature and size of the force authorized.

That's what Congress did in 2001. The Bush White House wanted authority to go after any terrorist anywhere who might be thinking about attacking Americans. The Senate leadership, Tom Daschle [D-SD] and Trent Lott [R-MS], wisely resisted giving that blank check and instead agreed to a measure limited to those directly connected to the 9/11 attacks.They also failed to include a White House request to authorize use of force inside the United States. Cleverly, the leaders adjourned the Senate for several days immediately after its vote, forcing the Republican-controlled House to accept the Senate language or cause a delay in passing the bill. [A year later, debating the authorizing of force against Iraq, the House bipartisan leadership pulled a similar ploy, undercutting Senate efforts to limit the mission of the war against Iraq.]

straight ticket voting

Finally I've come across a source listing those states that allow straight-ticket voting, where a single mark casts votes for all the candidates of the chosen party. The Hill newspaper has an article regarding a bill to ban the practice. FYI, those 15 states are: Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

The ability to vote a straight ticket is a legacy of the party machines that wanted to make it easy for voters to support the full slate. As far as I remember, my home state of Colorado never had the provision.

I don't feel strongly about forbidding the practice. There are such more important electoral reforms the federal government should be pushing, such as increasing the number of polling sites to avoid the long lines and increasing days for registration and voting.

Another legacy practice, in Virginia at least, is the failure to list part affiliation on the ballot -- because the pro-segregationist Virginia Democratic party in the 1960s didn't want to be hurt by linkage to the pro-civil rights national Democratic party. I don't think that should be required nationally either.

Holbrooke's revenge

Foreign Policy has a chapter from the forthcoming book by Vali Nasr, formerly a member of Richard Holbrooke's team as the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Nasr complains that the "White House jealously guarded all foreign policymaking" and funneled major decisions "through a small cabal of relatively inexperienced White House advisors whose turf was strictly politics."  He details how President Obama ignored Holbrooke's repeated proposals for peace negotiations with the Taliban and calls his own experience "deeply disillusioning."

Maybe the book has more persuasive details, but this chapter strikes me as sour grapes from an official whose boss was mistreated and whose supposedly brilliant ideas were ignored. Happens allt he time in Washington. That doesn't invalidate Nasr's complaint, but does provide a perspective.

I also think that Nasr doesn't really understand how the White House works.

- There have always been turf wars -- Holbrooke himself fought several quite successfully. Working at State at the end of the Clinton administration, I felt many times that the White House was our biggest enemy. But Holbrooke was long recognized as someone who should be excluded from meetings if he was expected to be disruptive. [Tony Lake did it in the Clinton years].
- The Obama people gave Holbrooke  a bureaucratically weak position and a nearly impossible task [including "solving" Pakistan while being excluded from anything to do with India]. Holbrooke was one of many "czars" [more under Obama than the Romanov family produced over 300 years] who had no legal authority, no Senate confirmation, and no budget.
- Nasr's complaint that that White House dominated policy and was run by political operatives who were neophytes on foreign policy is half right and half wrong. Of course the WH runs policy, especially the most important issues like ongoing wars. There is ample evidence is that Tom Donilon has run a very inclusive and deliberative process. Holbrooke just lost his share of battles, probably because his plans for negotiations with the Taliban weren't that persuasive. Political input to NSC matters has always been allowed, and welcomed by Presidents. Karl Rove and Karen Hughes were designated members of the NSC in the Bush years; the WH chief of staff has been for several administrations. They don't speak up in meetings but are on the circulation list for memos and thus know what is going on. They can weigh in in other ways.


I know a lot of people who worked with Holbrooke over the years. He was brilliant and forceful, which is wonderful when you agree with him and disruptive when you don't.

Iraq post-mortem

Congress did a smart thing by creating a special inspector general for U.S. activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The final report of the Iraq SIGIR is now out. Read it and weep.

Michael Gordon has a summary, mainly citing statements by US officials explaining what they saw going wrong.  I've just begun to look at the report, but what strikes me is hw much we tried to do, how much we spent, the noble aspirations, and the piddling results.

I know governments waste money in wartime, when urgency trumps efficiency. But I'm stunned and disappointed at how poorly coordinated and planned our nation-building turned out to be.

UPDATE: A key factoid from the report: Congress appropriated $60.6 billion for Iraqi reconstruction; $58.3 billion was actually expended. The money was channeled through five major programs and 18 smaller ones. The Defense Department controlled 87% of the funds.

Oversight of drone and offensive cyber operations

RollCall has my piece today calling for a "Title 60" law putting drone and offensive cyber operations under a regime similar to the one for CIA covert operations, with presidential findings and congressional notification. I hope lawmakers will consider such a measure in order to provide more transparency and accountability for such activities. Meanwhile, I see that the Defense Science Board has a new report calling existing cyber defenses weak.  That's a separate issue: I want to be sure that, if we want to conduct cyber attacks, we do it in a legally bounded way.