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New Webb Sign-On Letter On Iran
Carah Ong of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation reports that Sen. James Webb has started circulating a sign-on letter on Iran. The whole letter is available at the link, but the most important sentence is: "We wish to emphasize that no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action against Iran." It now has 22 Senate co-signers. (The list should be available soon.)
What's the significance of the letter? The answer has three parts:
1. Legally speaking, the letter has no significance whatsoever.
2. Moreover, it's legally false.
3. The legal aspect is essentially irrelevant. It's the political aspect that matters, and here it might have some impact.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
1. No legal significance
Sign-on letters are meaningless, legally speaking. And the number of signers is tiny for this kind of thing.
2. Legally false
There's no settled answer to what powers the president possesses in matters of war and peace. (See below.) Theoretically war can only be declared by Congress, but by precedent and law, they've clearly ceded enormous ground to the executive branch. The War Powers Act explicitly allows presidents to conduct a war for sixty days without congressional authorization. Moreover, Bill Clinton violated even this requirement during the 78-day Kosovo bombing campaign, with no consequences. It would be painful to listen to Hillary Clinton explain why he could do that but Bush can't attack Iran. (And if Bush does attack Iran, count on Republicans bringing up Kosovo over and over again.)
So if Bush decided to bomb Iran tomorrow, he would have an extremely strong legal case. But that doesn't matter anyway. Because:
3. War is purely a political question, and here the Webb letter might matter
I wrote about the general issue last spring in this Mother Jones article. The bottom line is if a president wants to attack another country, laws don't matter by themselves. He can do it if he's willing to pay the political price.
Imagine if Congress passed a law, over Bush's veto, prohibiting him from attacking Iran without further congressional authorization. If he still ordered the military to attack, high-ranking officers might resign. But eventually he'd find someone to do it. And off we'd go. Moreover Bush could rationally calculate that once the war started, Congress wouldn't have the balls to refuse to pass funding for it.
It's true such a law would have an enormous impact...but only because it would raise the political cost of war—causing more resignations, more Republican defections, and more angry editorials—rather than because it would make war "illegal." And here's the important point: Congress can raise the political cost without passing any new laws. See the Mother Jones article for some specific possibilities. But 22 Senators could make an enormous amount of noise if they were motivated and organized, particularly if they included presidential candidates.
It's here the letter might matter. It's unlikely the 22 Senators will end up causing too much trouble; note that (as far as I'm aware) there's been no coordination on this with outside groups. But the interesting thing about life is you truly never know.
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Posted by Jonathan Schwarz on 10/31/07 at 6:10 PM | E-mail | Print | Digg | de.licio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Yahoo! MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Netscape | Google |
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Comments
AIPAC has already given the orders that Iran must be bombed. The letter doesn't mean anything. The orders will be carried out in the near future. We have the best Congress that money can buy.
Posted by: Herschel on 11/01/07 at 7:35 AM Respond
So they ended up submitting the letter with 30 signers, as you can see in the later post over here...
http://charliedavis.blogspot.com/2007/11/senator-webb-warns-against-attack-on.html
...which you, Jonathan, linked to in a post at Tom Tomorrow's blog earlier than that later post, but later than this early post, though not tomorrow... and it was from your post that I found my way to the charliedavis post and thence to this post. How delightfully circular the tubes can be.
Now, why WOULDN'T a Democratic senator sign this? It's a no-brainer, and that means they qualify!
The game now is to take back territory that's been conceded to the Executioner's branch. But we shouldn't do that, because so much territory has already been conceded in the past? This escapes me.
To circle back one more time, here's what I posted at the charliedavis blog:
No Kennedy? No Feingold? No everybody else?
Surveys show... 30 out of 100 Senators agree that the Constitution means what it says!
Posted by: woid on 11/01/07 at 3:45 PM Respond
Webb is proving to be a powerful influence on congress and in a very short time.
My question? Where's Obama? Why is his name absent on this list.
Woid noted this a no-brainer. I agree.
Posted by: Nick Stump on 11/01/07 at 4:38 PM Respond
Your pseudo-legalistic understanding of the political system is truly inspiring. It's nice to see what kind of stuff Mother Jones is letting into their magazine these days.
Posted by: John Madziarczyk on 11/04/07 at 1:33 AM Respond
I wonder if those "support our troops" conservatives have considered that Iran might actually fight back, and our troops in Iraq are sitting ducks.
Posted by: libhomo on 11/06/07 at 5:39 AM Respond
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