Congress' cowardice on Islamic State
AT SOME POINT, Congress must find the courage to listen to U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine’s warnings about the violence Islamic State is doing to America’s Constitution.
Since August 2014, U.S. warplanes and drones have been chasing the fundamentalist thugs of the Islamic State group across Syria and Iraq.
We’ve been lobbing bombs into their bedrooms, destroying their encampments, disrupting their movement and killing their leaders. And yet Islamic State — also known by the acronyms ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) or ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) or DAESH (for al-Dawla al-Islamyia fil Iraq wa’al Sham) — continues to attract acolytes and spread its brutal madness.
The organization, which seeks to impose religious rule on the planet, grew from al-Qaida in the vacuum created by the civil war in Syria and the American troop withdrawal in Iraq.
Its inhumanity is known worldwide. It imposes a medieval brand of Islam wherever it goes. It encourages the rape of young girls. It has beheaded teenagers for making a joke. It has slaughtered fellow Muslims because they don’t follow ISIS’s peculiarly brutal form of sharia. It has killed women and children and journalists, often specifically for the publicity it would attract.
It is richer and better equipped than any terrorist organization in history. And in the past month, it has grown serious about exporting violence, attacking civilians in France, from Russia and in North Africa. It is clearer than ever that ISIS is at war with the world and has the wherewithal to inflict both physical and psychic damage.
For all of the American bombs that have rained down over the Middle East since August 2014, the United States remains pointedly not officially at war with ISIS.
That’s a clear violation of both the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution, and yet lawmakers and the White House seem content to use the growing threat as just another political talking point in the disgraceful partisan theater that is Washington.
Congress’ unwillingness to play its proper role in the declaration of war is no surprise; the same people happy to meddle in the negotiation of the Iran nuclear treaty find themselves without courage when it comes to the threat from ISIS. They are only too happy to thump their chests about the president’s foreign policy missteps, but they refuse to do their constitutional job.
They may claim that you can’t declare war on an organization like ISIS, though that’s sophistry and semantics. The real reason is that Congress simply doesn’t want to take responsibility for what’s to come. And that, by any definition, is cowardice.
It’s making America look weak on the world stage and ineffective in its governance.
“We criticize the president, but won’t vote to authorize, stop or refine what he is doing,” Kaine wrote, along with Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, in Time. “Congressional silence sends a message. Our allies wonder whether we have the resolve to work with them to stop this threat. ISIS must take comfort in the seeming ambivalence of Congress. Most damning, our troops — ordered to risk their lives thousands of miles from home — wonder whether Congress even supports the dangerous missions they must carry out every day.”
By refusing to take action against ISIS, Congress is failing its duty to represent Americans and to counterbalance the White House. It is failing to assert its legitimacy in matters of greatest import. It is failing our allies. It is failing the world and the cause of freedom.
America is not France, whose president can declare war in response to a coordinated terrorist attack across its capital. Nor are we Russia, where a dictator can send its missiles flying when Islamic State is implicated in the bombing of its airliner. We’re not China, where the central party can declare war on Islamic State because they kill their hostages.
We are America. War requires the endorsement of our people, who send their representatives and senators to Washington. It requires all of us.
