The U.S. and U.K. led a series of airstrikes in Yemen on Thursday evening, setting off alarms globally about how the attacks play into the smoldering regional risk of conflict — including a stream of questions from Congress about whether Biden was legally authorized to conduct the strikes at all.
What’s the argument that it’s a good idea? That congress is dysfunctional and can’t respond to urgent threats in a timely manner?
Basically, and that in the modern era where attacks can happen very quickly and with zero warning from non-state actors (as opposed to having to march an army across fields for days), the President needs to be able to react very quickly.
Given the current state of Congress, with a shutdown looming, no real plan, and apparently now some rumblings of a plan to oust the Speaker yet again, I can kinda understand the logic.
More cynically, it isolates Congress members from any political accountability.
I understand the logic in this case but I still think congress should have more oversight of US military force. If the entire body is too cumbersome to react quickly, surely a delegated committee could be formed that can approve or deny actions quickly. The danger of having that power unilaterally available to the president is too great.
For what it’s worth, I don’t really disagree.
So they really said “Instead of making our congress functional again, we’ll drop some of the oversights on warfare”. Brilliant.