War Powers Resolution consistently ignored
John Isaacs | Jul 21, 2011 |
0 THE HILL BLOG
In 1973, in my first job in Washington, D.C., I helped to pass the War Powers Resolution. At the time, it seemed like a good idea.
The country was reeling from the Vietnam War that had proved so divisive and caused so many casualties. Many blamed Presidents John F. Kennedy for surreptitiously getting the country into a war, Lyndon Johnson for using falsehoods to win approval of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and Richard Nixon for his secret plan to end the war that led to many more years of fighting and dying.
War powers advocates argued that the measure was essential for Congress to reassert its power to make war that had atrophied since the declaration of war against Germany and Japan in 1941 – the last time Congress so declared.
