Curbing a future president's war powers?

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - Congress is gradually working its way toward putting limits on President Bush’s ability to use U.S. troops in Iraq.

So here’s a question for each of those senators who hopes to become the next commander in chief: How would you like if Congress put limits on your powers, if you became president?

Does putting a ceiling on the number of U.S. troops in Iraq set a precedent for a future Congress to hobble the power of the next commander in chief?

The limits Congress might enact in the next few months could come back to haunt the next president. All presidents in the past 30 years, both Republican and Democratic, from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, in wars from Vietnam to Kosovo, have quarreled with Congress over their powers as commander in chief.

“I read the Constitution as the Congress having two authorities in this area; one is to declare war and the other is to cut off funding,” said a leading GOP contender, Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., Tuesday. “I’ve never seen anything in the Constitution that says that Congress can set the level of troops (in Iraq or some theater of war): that’s why we have one commander in chief. I’m astonished that people (in Congress) would think they have the knowledge and expertise as to what specific troop levels should be.”

Clinton sees no curbs if she were president
Democratic presidential contender Sen. Hillary Clinton, D- N.Y. implied Tuesday that if she were in the White House, Congress would not impose limits on her powers as commander in chief because she’d never give it reason to do so.

“I never would have waged a pre-emptive war in Iraq,” said Clinton. “And I would hope I never would have waged such a war anywhere in the world so incompetently.”

NBC VIDEO Clinton wants 'redeployment' of troops Jan. 23: Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. tells NBC's Brian Williams that the Democrats' "goal is to begin a phase redeployment" of U.S. out of Iraq. MSNBC

Another Democratic presidential contender, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut took a similar line: “If I were commander in chief, we’d be getting our troops out of Iraq,” Dodd said. “I don’t think I’d have the problem of worrying about whether or not there’d be caps on them.”

Dodd said that a limit on a president’s deployment of troops might be something regrettable that a president simply has to live with.

“Listen, we’d prefer we didn’t have to do this,” he said.

Dodd has called for capping the number of troops in Iraq at the level it was on Jan. 16, 2007.

Perhaps with her husband’s experience in mind in his struggles with Congress over use of U.S. forces in Bosnia and Kosovo, Clinton struck the same note as Dodd: a limit on a president’s deployment of troops would be regrettable, but is now imperative.

“We’ve had caps (on U.S. troops) in Colombia; we had a cap on Bosnia. So presidents, both Republican and Democrat, have lived with caps. It’s unfortunate we get to that point,” she said.

McCain, Dodd and Clinton all voted for the 2002 congressional resolution to authorize Bush to use military force in Iraq.

Obama: 'not an optimal solution'
Sen. Barack Obama, D- Ill., like Dodd and Clinton, portrayed congressional limits on the commander in chief as a regrettable necessity.

NBC VIDEO Obama says Iraq plan 'wrong-headed' Jan. 11: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaking with TODAY host Meredith Vieira, discusses his reaction to President Bush's new Iraq strategy and what Congress can do to constrain the "wrong-headed policy." Today show

Referring to a limit on number of troops that Bush can keep in Iraq, Obama said Tuesday, “It’s not an optimal solution for us to have to legislate military strategy. Generally speaking, those powers should be housed with the commander-in-chief because situations on the ground are constantly changing. When a president seems obstinate and unwilling to adjust strategy to the situation on the ground, repeatedly after years of bad outcomes, at some point the democratic process has to kick in.”

He added, “If I were president and I kept on making bad decisions with no end in sight, I would expect that at some point Congress would try to step in and right the course.”

Obama supports a limit on troops deployed in Iraq. On Tuesday he also introduced a bill requiring Bush to begin withdrawal of troops by May 1 with the goal of getting all troops out by the first quarter of 2008.

Last week Vice President Dick Cheney said if members of Congress really intend to end the deployment in Iraq, “they have the right, obviously, to cut off funding.”

But Obama rejected that idea Tuesday.

“Why is it that we’re only restricted to that one means? There’s nothing that prevents us from exercising other means,” he contended.

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