To the Editor:
Your Dec. 27 editorial “Congress and the War Against ISIS” presents the burdens backward. The War Powers Resolution tells the president not to make war without specific congressional authority. The burden is not on Congress to give him authority; rather, the restriction is on the president not to make war without getting such authority.
The law was enacted with full recognition that such authority is hard to get—that Congress is exquisitely skilled in doing nothing. (Remember all the failed attempts to legislate an end to the Vietnam War—a trail of failure that was on everyone’s mind when the War Powers Act was designed and enacted.)
But Congress’s failure to act is not authority for the president to send the armed forces into combat without authorization. That is exactly the point and purpose of the War Powers Resolution.
FRANK CUMMINGS
Washington
The writer was Senator Jacob Javits’s chief of staff when Mr. Javits first introduced the War Powers Resolution.
Note from KBJ: Frank Cummings must not have gotten the memo to the effect that Barack Obama, being (half) black, gets to do whatever he wants without opposition or criticism. Not allowing him to do what he wants is racism, pure and simple.
