Abstract
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Congress and the nation justifiably rallied around the flag. George W. Bush, who had appeared ill-suited to the presidency, was transformed into a widely applauded commander-in-chief leading the charge after the worst attack on American soil since the Civil War.
Bush received almost unanimous support in Congress for military action against AI Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, for assuming greater power at home to defend against future terrorist attacks, and for spending tens of billions of dollars to prosecute the war and rebuild New York and the Pentagon. Bush's popularity soared; polls continue to indicate he has the backing of more than 80 percent of the American public.
When Bush announced, in the midst of the fighting in Afghanistan, that the United States would withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, there were few complaints from Congress, the nation's editorial pages, or foreign governments. And few civil libertarians have objected to the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists at Guantânamo Bay, Cuba, or of foreign nationals at other U.S. facilities.
The support-the-president frenzy extended into 2002 even as the United States sent military advisers to the Philippines, Georgia, and Yemen, and began discussing an invasion of Iraq.
But in February, after a five-month hiatus, Congress finally began to reassert itself on national security issues. West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, president pro tem of the Senate and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, launched the first verbal assault, and others followed in his wake.
At a February 27 Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, Byrd complained: “Instead of concentrating on completing our operations in Afghanistan, the Pentagon seems to be looking for opportunities to stay longer and to extend itself into the region.” He continued: “If we expect to kill every terrorist in the world, that's going to keep us going beyond Doomsday. How long can we afford this?”
Byrd was joined by South Carolina Democrat Ernest Hollings, who questioned the cost of the war and the expanded overseas involvement in the Philippines and the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The next day, Majority Leader Tom Daschle backed up his two senior Democrats.
Republicans responded by attacking Daschle and the Democrats. Minority Leader Trent Lott declared, “How dare Senator Daschle criticize President Bush while we are fighting our war on terrorism?” The Republican Senate Campaign Committee ran ads against several Democratic senators running for re-election, implicitly accusing them of undermining the war effort.
The traditional partisan battle spread. Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, Vietnam war hero and probable presidential candidate in 2004, used his war credentials to defend the dissenters. In a March 2 speech in New Hampshire, he declared: “It's time to remind our Republican friends that the freedom they love to preach about also includes the freedom to disagree and the right to dissent.” Reminding his audience of his and others' challenge to the Vietnam war, he went on to criticize “those who try to stifle the vibrancy of our democracy and shield policies from scrutiny behind a false cloak of patriotism.”
Byrd was not about to be silenced, penning a March 12 New York Times op-ed in which he forcefully proclaimed: “The loss of American lives in Afghanistan requires that we question the president's wartime policies.”
February also marked the first time that members of Congress, mostly but not exclusively Democrats, began to question other national security policies, particularly national missile defense, the Nuclear Posture Review, and an anticipated U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reduction treaty.
Democrats, who were largely silent on the demise of the ABM Treaty, made it clear that they are not ready to concede national missile defense deployment. Bush has requested a $48 billion increase in the military budget. Members of both parties see funding shortfalls, and many Democrats believe that some of these shortfalls could be addressed by redirecting some of the $7.8 billion requested for missile defense.
December 28, 2001: A U.S. light armored vehicle guards a runway at a Marine Corps base in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
That view was clearly expressed by the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Ike Skel-ton of Missouri. On February 6, after the first House hearing on the new military budget, he said, “At a time for such pressing needs–for shipbuilding, for force structure, and for continued transformation–I think we may be devoting too much money for missile defense.”
John Spratt, the respected moderate Democrat from South Carolina, agreed: “I can't see in this budget how you can possibly have enough [for missile defense] and accommodate all these other programs.” Last year, these two Democrats offered an amendment that would have reduced missile defense funding. They appear to be gearing up for another battle this year.
An analysis of the first series of congressional hearings on the new Pentagon budget suggests that support for national missile defense is strong, but less intense than last year. Even the Republican monolith in favor of early deployment is beginning to crack.
For many, homeland defense trumps missile defense. As conservative Arkansas Republican Sen. Tim Hutchinson–admittedly promoting a new vaccine production facility for his state–said at a February 5 hearing: “I have supported the administration in their desire for a national missile defense and its rationale–that we must not leave our cities, we must not leave our citizens, the American people, our population, defenseless against enemy attack. And yet when we look at the area of vaccine production [and] the possibility of biological attack and what we saw with anthrax, the American people remain defenseless to a large extent against a threat.”
Former Defense and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger, no doubt speaking for other Republicans as well, applauded the abandonment of the ABM Treaty. But, he added in a February 20 op-ed in the Washington Post, “Striking down the treaty as a barrier to development of necessary technology represents an acknowledgment that the technology for missile defense is not now in hand. Thus, any deployment remains a considerable distance off. Only time will tell what is feasible.”
The administration's Nuclear Posture Review also came under fire. Critics blasted the Pentagon study for insisting on storing instead of destroying nuclear weapons and for suggesting options that seemed to make the use of nuclear weapons more likely.
On February 14, the Senate Armed Services Committee grilled Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith about the study. Chairman Carl Levin and other Democrats questioned both its assumptions and conclusions. Levin argued: “The Nuclear Posture Review proposes simply to move those warheads from one location to another. But just as Enron couldn't make its debts disappear by moving them from one set of books to another, we are not going to make nuclear warheads go away by moving them from launchers to warehouses.”
Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed agreed: “The reality is that if one stops simply at the bottom line, we had 8,000 warheads going into the Nuclear Posture Review, and we still have 8,000 warheads.”
The review also outlined a number of potential uses for nuclear weapons. When questioned about these options in a March 13 press conference, President Bush stated: “We've got all options on the table, because we want to make it very clear to nations that you will not threaten the United States or use weapons of mass destruction against us, or our allies or friends.”
Massachusetts Democratic Cong. Ed Markey was quick to respond, “We have been trying to convince other countries that the use of nuclear weapons is unspeakable, and this administration is saying they are usable. It's like preaching temperance from a bar stool.”
There were other questions about the planned strategic nuclear weapons reductions on which Presidents Bush and Vladimir Putin are expected to agree at a May 2002 summit in Russia. When he first announced U.S. nuclear weapons reductions, Bush argued for a handshake agreement, with no formal document. After being pressed, Bush reluctantly declared at the November 13 press conference: “If we need to write it down on a piece of paper, I'll be glad to do that.” More recently, at his March 13 press conference, Bush conceded, “I also agree with President Putin that there needs to be a document that outlives both of us.” But the president did not say whether Congress would be asked to approve the agreement.
Senators have begun to weigh in on that question on a bipartisan basis. In a March 15 letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, joined by the ranking Republican, North Carolina's Jesse Helms, reasserted congressional prerogatives by insisting that any nuclear reduction agreement must be submitted to the Senate. Biden and Helms wrote: “No constitutional alternative exists to transmittal of the concluded agreement to the Senate for its advice and consent.”
“While Congress has moved from silent acquiescence to public criticism, it is not clear if any action will follow. But arguments over national security issues will be played out as Congress considers major national security bills in the late spring and early summer.