Should congressional approval be required for all or most military actions?

[Lief 🗽]

The way the War Powers Resolution sets things up seems to be fine, even if the law itself is unconstitutional nonsense.

[Lief 🗽]

The way the War Powers Resolution sets things up seems to be fine, even if the law itself is unconstitutional nonsense.

So should congress have to approve wars?

Yes, Congress should have to approve wars. Not all military action though. What we're doing in Syria or Libya is/was not a war. What we did in Iraq was.

[Lief 🗽]

Basically if Congress doesn't want the president using the military for something, they can defund it. Logistically the President can't decide to launch a full scale invasion of a country without congressional approval, so the only situations this is relevant in are limited airstrikes and things like that. But the executive branch, as an institution, is better able to handle these questions than Congress is.

[Lief 🗽]

The way the War Powers Resolution sets things up seems to be fine, even if the law itself is unconstitutional nonsense.

So should congress have to approve wars?

Yes, Congress should have to approve wars. Not all military action though. What we're doing in Syria or Libya is/was not a war. What we did in Iraq was.

The difference being, of course, the party of the man giving the orders.

If you think that's the only difference between the Iraq War and what we did in Libya then there's not much point in talking to you.

[Lief 🗽]

Right, so going by the constitution, the president should be able to command the armed forces to do whatever he wants. If congress doesn't like it, they're free to stop paying the soldiers and providing them with guns and bullets.

It's not self evident at all that the founders thought what you think they did. The congress gets to control the funding of the army, but once that army is funded, the president decides what to do with it.

[Lief 🗽]

Right, so going by the constitution, the president should be able to command the armed forces to do whatever he wants. If congress doesn't like it, they're free to stop paying the soldiers and providing them with guns and bullets.

It's not self evident at all that the founders thought what you think they did. The congress gets to control the funding of the army, but once that army is funded, the president decides what to do with it.

Except that's only happened maybe once in American history, and it wasn't the President who took a hit for it.

So? This is how the government is structured; public opinion is just as much a check and balance on the powers of each branch as the other branches are.