Without Congressional permission, public debate, or any attempt to rally the American public’s support, President Obama has ordered U.S. ground troops to a war zone, his most flagrantly unconstitutional war-making since he unlawfully helped to overthrow Muammar al-Qaddafi. “The United States is set to deploy troops on the ground in Syria for the first time to advise and assist rebel forces combating ISIS,” CNN reports. “The deployment of U.S. Special Operations forces is the most significant escalation of the American military campaign against ISIS to date.”
This should perturb even proponents of a U.S. war against ISIS.
As Obama put it prior to the 2008 election: “The president does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
Now he is engaging in the very actions that he specifically declared to be illegal. And Congress is abdicating its responsibility to either empower him to wage war or to rein him in. Its passivity is enabling Obama to exceed the limits of his power in a way that has, in the past, led to failed wars as catastrophic as Vietnam and as recent as Libya.