War and Responsibility, by John Hart Ely
Finn, James
it was precisely the rural Groupmans, Tet Ansamn groups, local Caritas organizations, and the Ti Legliz linked up by the Radio Soled transmitter that rallied the cities to action. The church in...
...The church at the base is still resisting dictatorship and praying for democracy...
...Some qualifications are called for here, but they do not change this major assertion: It is the right of Congress, not the president, to declare war...
...Of his foreign pol icy, it seems fair to say that he has none...
...He has written frequently about questions of war, legality, and morality...
...He did not intend, he said, to offend either the Constitution or the president, and he acknowledged that if he were president his stance would be very much like Clinton's...
...0 REMEMBER ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8 WAR AND RESPONSIBILITY Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath John Hart Ely Princeton University Press, $24.95, 244 pp...
...It is still being hunted and killed...
...Once war is authorized by Congress, the armed forces are quite properly under control of the commander in chief...
...Yet Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution is unequivocal...
...James Finn REVIEWERS JAY R. MANDLE is professor of Economics at Colgate University...
...n his first year in office, President Bill Clinton chose to concentrate his attention and energies on do mestic policies...
...But on one foreign policy issue he has stood firm: In October 1993, Senator Bob Dole (R-Kans...
...TIMOTHY A. BYRNES, who teaches politi cal science at Colgate University, spent the spring of 1993 in Poland on a Fulbright grant...
...And, in Ely's summary of the related powers : "To Congress also are granted the powers to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, to make rules for the government "It's not a crusade, boys-it's just a peace-keeping force...
...So accustomed have most of us become to believe that the right and obligation to shape foreign policy are lodged firmly in the executive branch that we tend to believe that strong congressional efforts to have a voice are intrusive...
...Most importantly, why is the official church so fearful of supporting one of her own who took the message to heart...
...indicated that he was going to introduce a senatorial amendment that would set conditions for the use of troops in Haiti unless there was a national security emergency...
...But it was only one in a long span of far more important incidents that reveal strong tensions between American presidents and the Congress in for eign-policy decisions that threaten or involve the use of military power...
...JAMES FINN is senior editor of Freedom Review, the bimonthly magazine published by Freedom House...
...He is the co-author, with Louis A. Ferleger, of the recently published book, A New Mandate: Democratic Choices for a Prosperous Economy (University of Missouri Press...
...This is the gravamen of the case that Ely presents in this short, technical, incisive, and readable book...
...The president can engage the armed forces in war without such prior authorization only to "repel sudden attacks...
...When a version of the Dole amendment was put to a senatorial vote, it was defeated 81 to 19...
...The president's legal advisers added that such an amendment would be unconstitutional because it would restrict "the right of the president to make foreign policy...
...However, according to John Hart Ely, an expert on the constitutional questions, Robert Dole was right initially and he, the president, and Congress subsequently took a misguided path...
...It states that Congress shall have the power to declare war...
...Presumably the resolution would set a precedent for other countries and situations...
...He would strongly oppose, he said, any congressional effort to limit his ability to make foreign policy or to exercise his authority as commander in chief...
...Subsequently, church people, often as martyrs, helped to rid Haiti of Generals Namphy and Avril...
...Why does the church, which was able to mobilize the peasants and the urban poor to dump a dictator, now appear so powerless to help create and support viable political institutions...
...Congress clearly sided with the president...
...Things have not changed much-except that the silence of the bishops is all the more deafening...
...JOHN P. HOGAN was director of Catholic Relief Services in Haiti and has written frequently for Commonweal...
...Viv Legliz" was a common chant during the resistance and overthrow of Baby Doc...
...The church in Haiti had a moment of glory...
...He is Margaret O'Brien Flatley Professor of Catholic Theology at Boston College...
...On the major issues that risked substantial military involvement-Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti-he has made left turns, right turns, and U-turns, disconcerting friends and critics alike...
...Confronted with 4,000 killed by a brutal military, 40,000 boat people, rising neoDuvalierism, a diplomatic impasse (if indeed there ever was a diplomatic opening), and what appears to be a tentative but growing armed insurgency, what should the church's stance be...
...President Clinton immediately responded...
...That incident had the life-span of a day lily-very short...
...24: 6 May 1994 Commonweal...
...Stated briefly, our Constitution invests Congress with certain foreign-policy powers, specifically that of declaring war...
...DAVID HOLLENBACH, S.J., recently pub lished Catholicism and Liberalism: Contributions to American Public Philosophy, edited with R. Bruce Douglass (Cambridge University Press...
...Dole rapidly backtracked...
Vol. 121 • May 1994 • No. 9
