WAR POWERS….For what it’s worth, lots of people disagree with my belief that Congress has the power to fund and defund war, but doesn’t have the operational authority to do things like set troop levels. Examples abound, but check out Fred Barbash here and Mark Kleiman here.
I’m not sure these arguments hold up, but obviously I’m no constitutional scholar and I may be off base. In any case, I suspect that we’re all going to become a lot smarter — or at least pseudo-smarter — about this in the next few months.
