{"id":12773,"date":"2024-01-29T17:59:34","date_gmt":"2024-01-29T17:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12773"},"modified":"2024-01-29T17:59:34","modified_gmt":"2024-01-29T17:59:34","slug":"what-history-says-about-bidens-power-to-strike-back-against-the-houthis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12773","title":{"rendered":"What History Says About Biden\u2019s Power to Strike Back Against the Houthis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“During the Constitutional Convention<\/strong> in 1787, the framers debated how to allocate military and war powers among the branches of government. Some, like Pierce Butler of South Carolina, thought that power should lie with the president, while most others, including Elbridge Gerry, \u201cnever expected to hear in a Republic a motion to empower the Executive alone<\/em> to declare war.\u201d (Emphasis added.) Reflecting this consensus, James Madison successfully moved to change a draft sentence that empowered Congress to \u201cmake\u201d war to language empowering it to \u201cdeclare\u201d war \u2014 the implication being that \u201cthe Executive should be able to repel and not commence, war,\u201d in the words of Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman.”
…
“Convinced that paying off the pirates was both costly and without an end in sight, Jefferson resolved to take military action. For weeks, his cabinet debated whether the president had sole authority as commander-in-chief to send naval forces to the Mediterranean in a defensive posture. Only one, Attorney General Levi Lincoln, argued that he needed congressional approval even for this limited measure. But the cabinet\u2019s general consensus held that Jefferson enjoyed some<\/em> prerogative.
Jefferson agreed. Without congressional approval, he sent an American fleet to the Mediterranean, with detailed instructions of what to do \u2014 and what not to do. Commodore Richard Dale, the officer in charge, was ordered to \u201csink, burn, capture, or destroy vessels attacking those of the United States.<\/em>\u201d But his men were not to initiate combat or step foot on Barbary land. Only after the Republican Congress authorized \u201cwarlike operations against the regency of Tripoli, or any other of the Barbary powers,\u201d did Dale\u2019s forces proactively attack the pirate states on their own land. Ultimately, American military success, particularly at the Battle of Derna in 1805, convinced the Barbary authorities that it was time to call a truce. The Treaty of Peace and Friendship, signed the same year, effectively drew a close on Jefferson\u2019s Barbary wars.”
…
“Contrary to the assertions of progressives like Jayapal and conservatives like Greene, presidents since the founding have affirmed their authority and responsibility to deploy military forces defensively without congressional approval.To date, Biden has unilaterally ordered targeted strikes against Houthi military targets to diminish the terrorists\u2019 ability to persist in their piracy. He hasn\u2019t ordered a ground invasion of Yemen, a wider offensive against civil and governmental assets or an initiative to depose the Houthi government. He has followed closely in Jefferson\u2019s footsteps, even if 250 years of evolution in technology and warfare make a direct comparison complicated.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2024\/01\/24\/biden-power-houthis-history-00137185<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the framers debated how to allocate military and war powers among the branches of government. Some, like Pierce Butler of South Carolina, thought that power should lie with the president, while most others, including Elbridge Gerry, \u201cnever expected to hear in a Republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war.\u201d (Emphasis added.) Reflecting this consensus, James Madison successfully moved to change a draft sentence that empowered Congress to \u201cmake\u201d war to language empowering it to \u201cdeclare\u201d war \u2014 the implication being that \u201cthe Executive should be able to repel and not commence, war,\u201d in the words of Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Convinced that paying off the pirates was both costly and without an end in sight, Jefferson resolved to take military action. For weeks, his cabinet debated whether the president had sole authority as commander-in-chief to send naval forces to the Mediterranean in a defensive posture. Only one, Attorney General Levi Lincoln, argued that he needed congressional approval even for this limited measure. But the cabinet\u2019s general consensus held that Jefferson enjoyed some prerogative.<\/p>\n

Jefferson agreed. Without congressional approval, he sent an American fleet to the Mediterranean, with detailed instructions of what to do \u2014 and what not to do. Commodore Richard Dale, the officer in charge, was ordered to \u201csink, burn, capture, or destroy vessels attacking those of the United States.\u201d But his men were not to initiate combat or step foot on Barbary land. Only after the Republican Congress authorized \u201cwarlike operations against the regency of Tripoli, or any other of the Barbary powers,\u201d did Dale\u2019s forces proactively attack the pirate states on their own land. Ultimately, American military success, particularly at the Battle of Derna in 1805, convinced the Barbary authorities that it was time to call a truce. The Treaty of Peace and Friendship, signed the same year, effectively drew a close on Jefferson\u2019s Barbary wars.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Contrary to the assertions of progressives like Jayapal and conservatives like Greene, presidents since the founding have affirmed their authority and responsibility to deploy military forces defensively without congressional approval.
\nTo date, Biden has unilaterally ordered targeted strikes against Houthi military targets to diminish the terrorists\u2019 ability to persist in their piracy. He hasn\u2019t ordered a ground invasion of Yemen, a wider offensive against civil and governmental assets or an initiative to depose the Houthi government. He has followed closely in Jefferson\u2019s footsteps, even if 250 years of evolution in technology and warfare make a direct comparison complicated.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2024\/01\/24\/biden-power-houthis-history-00137185<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[552,542,429,2004,770,1152,391,2003,222,373,1034,108,115,1310,158,1151],"class_list":["post-12773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-conflict","tag-congress","tag-constitution","tag-declaration-of-war","tag-history","tag-houthi","tag-middle-east","tag-north-africa","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-presidential-power","tag-terrorism","tag-terrorists","tag-thomas-jefferson","tag-war","tag-yemen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12774,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12773\/revisions\/12774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}