Kucinich and Turner Debate the War Powers Act, Amy Goodman Refs

I also want to point out that when he says that they're consistent with the War Powers Act, if you--if they recognize the War Powers Act, then at the outermost marker, they're in violation by the end of this week. If they don't recognize the War Powers Act, then that's the reason why we're in court, to see if the War Powers Act is viable at all anymore. That is a--that's a legal question. But beyond the statutory questions here, there's a constitutional question. And I would just like to say to the professor, with all due respect--and I suppose that you probably know more about these issues than most people, because you've written books about it--that there is nowhere in the Constitution where it says that our treaty obligations trump bedrock constitutional principles, which are enshrined in Article I, Section 8, with respect to the role of the Congress, established in Article I, first among equals, to declare war. We do not give up our congressional right, as determined by the Founders, who wrote that in there, that the Congress shall have the power to declare war. We don't give that right up simply because we have assumed obligations under Chapter 7. The U.N. Security Council and our obligations under NATO do not trump the Constitution of the United States. And that's the point we're trying to make in going in with this lawsuit, which I hope that the gentleman will have a chance to study, because you may see that if we are able to get standing, that this suit will have the potential for being able to reset the imbalance which has occurred on this question of the war power.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Professor Turner, this question that Congressmember Kucinich put to you. If a country dropped bombs on us, would you call it war? Would you say the U.S. is at war in Libya right now?

ROBERT TURNER: Let me, almost as a point of personal privilege, emphasize I'm not defending President Obama, nor am I attacking him. I'm defending the Constitution, as it's been understood for years. I would say, in the defense of the White House spokesman, that he did not say "withdraw U.S. forces." He said, "withdraw U.S."--he said we have no forces in Libya, which is not the same thing as having forces taking part in this U.N. operation.

I certainly agree with the congressman that neither the U.N. Charter nor any other treaty can trump the Constitution. The problem is, the Constitution gives Congress a narrow negative on the general executive control of external relations. A declaration of war was understood to be an all-out war--today, an illegal war--operating under the unanimous--reports of both the Senate and House Foreign Affairs Committees acknowledged that the president was authorized to implement our obligations under the Charter, and they don't affect the power of Congress to declare war. You know, obviously, there's a big difference between the U.N. Security Council acting under Chapter 7, authorizing the use of force to deal with a threat to the peace, and some other country launching thousands of planes against us without cause.

You know, but one other point is very important. The White House keeps saying, "Oh, you're going to undermine our operation. You're going to encourage the enemy." I was--followed very closely the 1983 debates on the Beirut deployment, and I watched as members of Congress, in a very partisan way--I think two Democrats in the Senate voted to support President Reagan on this multilateral deployment. And at the end of it, or during the hearings, P.X. Kelley, the commandant of the Marine Corps, went to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and pleaded with them that their partisan debate was endangering the lives of our Marines. And now, Vice President Joe Biden got up on the 29th of September, 1983, in the Senate debate, floor debate, and he said, "You've all heard that by even having this debate we're endangering our Marines. Well, that may be true, but we'll never know until we have one of these debates." On October 23rd, terrorists--or shortly thereafter, we intercepted a message between two of the radical Islamic terrorist groups saying, "If we kill 15 Marines, the rest will go home, or the rest will leave." And on the 23rd of October, early morning on Sunday, a terrorist bomb killed 241 Marines. Why did that happen? Normally you don't want to kill American Marines, because by morning a lot more will be there with a real bad attitude. But in this case, Congress had inadvertently put a bounty on the lives of those Marines by saying--in fact, Chuck Percy, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, actually said, "We're not washing our hands. We've authorized this for 18 months. If there are any more casualties, we can reconsider this vote at any time." And it was right after that that the terrorists said, "Let's kill 15 Marines. The rest will go." They killed 241. And I place a large deal of blame for that right on the foot of a partisan United States Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Congressmember Kucinich, we just have 10 seconds. Can you respond?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Yeah, historians should be very careful about putting blood on anybody's hands.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we're going to leave it there. Robert Turner, co-founder of the University of Virginia's Center for National Security Law, joining us from the University of Virginia, thanks so much for being with us. And Congressmember Dennis Kucinich, who has joined with 10 other members of Congress in suing President Obama over the War Powers Act.