Addiction and Abdication

The Executive and Legislative Branches Regarding the Use of the Military.

Following the rise of the Islamic State in 2014, the current Administration began deploying troops back to Iraq. They were deployed in small increments to avoid drawing too much public or congressional attention, but over time the number ballooned to more than 5,000. Later, troops were also sent to Syria to aid rebels, and in 2015 to Libya for the same purpose. But in just the last few months, the Obama Administration has deployed hundreds of additional U.S. troops to several places around the globe – and Congress has not debated the merits of a single one of them. 

These deployments are not happening behind closed doors, and the media has kept Congress and the public informed of these movements. In just the past six months, the President has ordered:

American military personnel can successfully accomplish every tactical objective given, and still, the U.S. will fail strategically. The record of strategic outcomes speaks for itself: After military intervention in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, and thus far everywhere in Africa the military instrument has been employed, objectives were achieved, yet the security situation in each has worsened, sometimes profoundly so.

While the Administration has become addicted to the use of military power, Congress has abdicated its responsibility and obligation to authorize it.

American soldiers deployed overseas willingly obey the orders given to them, regardless of whether it places their lives in danger. It is not asking too much for Congress to debate the merits of missions sending U.S. citizens into harm’s way, regardless of the electoral risk.

How can it be that we expect service members to have the moral and physical courage to risk and sometimes lose their lives in the conduct of military missions ordered by the President and funded by the Congress – but continue to allow the President to issue such orders without accountability and Congress to remain silent and off the record?

In his valedictory address, President George Washington warned, “The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position… (Though in a given situation such abuse) may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” 

The Congress is now seemingly unwilling to question any mission the administration sends the U.S. military on. In effect, the President has a blank check to use the armed forces as he sees fit. Congress would do well to heed Washington’s advice and once again assert its role as a check on the Executive branch.

Daniel L. Davis is a fellow and military expert at Defense Priorities. He served multiple tours in Afghanistan as a Lt. Col. for the U.S. Army.