Are We Headed For A Constitutional Crisis?
The word is spreading through the hallways of the Congressional office buildings in Washington. Democrats may follow up the proposed resolution against a troop surge with a move to cutoff funding and prevent the President from sending an additonal 20,000 troops to Iraq.
Will this work and does Congress have the power to stop funding for additional troops? First of all, Congress would never cut off funds for existing troops. But there is precedent for the cutting off funding for additional forces and that would be the historic Congress in 1975 that forced President Ford to end the war in Vietnam. This case may be different, because the President has already announced his decision for the troop surge in Baghdad.
In any event, this may force the country into a Constitutional Crisis, pitting the legislative branch against the President.
There is one aspect of the Iraq debate that many opponents of the war have not been communicating well. Most anti-war Democrats and Republicans want our forces removed from the civil war that is now going. But many in that group of lawmakers also want U.S. forces to remain in the region.
In fact, that insistence that American forces stay in the Middle East, has not been clearly sold by the opponents of the war. It is a reality that if our troops were removed from the Middle East tinder box, there would be the potential for Iran and Syria to boldly take advantage of the situation.
In the cloud of all this controversy, this reality has been basically ignored.
So, as we stand on the precipice of an historic battle over the powers of war, the great national debate about “what happens next” after iraq, has been buried beneath the headlines of the emotions surrounding this war.
Watch for more political fireworks in the days ahead.
