Operation Desert Calm

Was the Senate ever even involved OTL? :confused:
Wikipedia said:
President George H. W. Bush requested a Congressional joint resolution on January 8, 1991, one week before the January 15, 1991 deadline issued to Iraq specified by the November 29, 1990 United Nations United Nations Security Council Resolution 678. President Bush had deployed over 500,000 U.S. troops without Congressional authorization to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf region in the preceding five months in response to Iraq's August 2, 1990 invasion of Kuwait. President Bush said that as Commander-in-chief he did not need Congressional authorization to use military force against Iraq and that his request for a Congressional joint resolution was merely a courtesy to Congress.
I mean, suppose the Senate does say no. Bush continues to send troops into Iraq..
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Bad time for a constitutional crisis.

Still, we might have been spared some of the Clinton toy soldier operations.

I'd probably disagree there. Politically, those were hard enough sells as it was so I'd assume the Clinton Administration's spin machine could still sell the air wars over Kosovo and Bosnia*. Remember that the Congress in the 1990s was probably the closest we've gotten to "isolationist" since the 1930s.



*Hell, the Clinton Administration could've sold us on invading Iraq if they wanted to...
 
WI the US Senate voted against authorizing military forced to be used in the Gulf following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait?

depends on when exactly

no force was used up until the Allied counterinvasion and by that point we had a pretty big army in Saudi already.

Even then Bush can send them in under the War Powers Act (which has never been tested constitutionally) and treat the operations as a Police Action for example (like Korea). The only thing that Congress can do then is either try to impeach him (which would not have happened) or refuse to pay the bills (not pass a budget). Really, Bush did not need Congress for that one.

The younger Bush however was in a situation where he had to have congressional support as in 2003 Iraq was less clearly a threat.
 
Undertaking an major military action, while a quorum can be convened in Congress is constitutionally highly dubious. There may be legalistic niceties, but it seems fairly obvious to me that when the constitution gave Congress the power to declare war, they weren't expecting that this could just be got around by the President performing military actions indistinguishable from war without declaring war.

I know Presidents don't accept it and it hasn't been tested in the Supreme Court, but the War Powers Act has been adhered to by every President who has put troops in major combat since, except for President Clinton's air raids on Yugoslavia (which was arguably not major combat). This suggests that the President's legal advisers know they are on very shaky ground in opposing it.
 
Top