Pod Save the World - Illegal Wars with Senator Tim Kaine

Episode Date: June 14, 2017

Tommy talks with Senator Tim Kaine about how it’s possible that sixteen years after the 9/11 attacks, the congressional authorization that allowed us to respond with military force is the legal basis for wars against groups like ISIS that didn’t even exist at the time.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. This is Tommy Vitor. Thank you guys for tuning in. My guest today is Senator Tim Cain, the United States Senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia, not state of Virginia. Don't ever say that again. We had a conversation today about something that is so unbelievably important, but is never discussed, which is the legal framework for all the wars we're in. The authorization for the use of military force was passed in 2001. It has not been updated since, and yet we have not just continued to be a war in Afghanistan, but that has expanded to today. different continents to different terrorist groups. And we have not updated that authorization because the politics are hard. So Senator Kane talks a lot about his bipartisan bill to reintroduce a new

authorization for the use of military force and why he thinks it's so important. He's a brilliant guy. This is clearly something he's passionate about. And I really enjoy the conversation. I think you will too. Senator Kane, thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview and for being one of the few members of Congress who seems to really care about the legal basis for the many wars were fighting, you would think that declaring war, providing oversight of those wars would be one of the most important things. An elected official does, but sometimes it seems like the politics of these issues scare people away for their responsibility.

And we appreciate your courage. And I would note that you push President Obama on this issue in the same way that you push the Trump administration. So this isn't partisan. This is substantive. So thank you. You bet, Tommy. It's for some set of reasons it's been a long time passion of mine.

And even though I've been frustrated by the lack of progress thus far, I'm very focused on the issue. And, you know, we've had some recent progress that I'm looking forward to talking to you about. Yes, me too. Okay. So I am not a lawyer. So if I mess anything up, please correct me. But I want to try to lay this out a little bit of a 101 on how we're supposed to provide our legal basis for wars in this country. So Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution says that Congress has the sole power to declare war.

But Article 2, Section 2 says the president shall be commander, chief. for the Army and Navy of the United States. So here's where it gets a little confusing. People seem to square that circle by agreeing that the President has the power to use the military to repel attacks against the United States. But the question of whether a president is authorized to send forces into hostilities abroad without Congress is controversial. In practice, Congress has declared war 11 times.

The last time was during World War II. However, they've authorized limited conflicts like the Persian Gulf War, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But to complicate everything even more, in 1973, Congress passed the war powers resolution, which stipulates the president can keep military forces deployed in hostilities for up to 60 days without a congressional war declaration or use of force authorization. So, Senator Kane, I dealt with these issues when I had the White House, but I just confused myself and probably all the listeners. So I guess my first question is, what role do you think Congress should play when it comes to waging war? And why do you think we need a

new authorization for the use of military force? Sure. Let me, uh, tackle the first question, which is kind of generally how should it work. And then let's talk about the current military conflicts the United States is involved in why I think a new authorization is necessary. So I think the way you square the circle between the congressional and the presidential power is you kind of go back to what Madison and others you drafted the Constitution said about it. And they were pretty clear. In order to start a war, we want to have Congress weigh in the people's elected legislative body. And that was a radical departure from the way war was conducted in the world. Executives started war. There's a great scene in the opening act of Henry V. Shakespeare writes about why executives

start wars. That's what they knew in 1787, and they decided they wanted the United States to be different. So to start a war, you need Congress. However, having Congress, 535 people manage a war would be a disaster. So you give the president one person the power to be commander-in-chief once started, tactical questions should be ultimately decided by the president in consultation with military leadership. From the very beginning, there was an understanding that the president should be able to act on his or her own to repel an attack on the United States and imminent defense of the nation. And Tommy, that makes sense. If you think about, you know, back in the day, Congress would adjourn and they'd ride horseback back to Montpelier, Vermont. If there was an attack,

you couldn't get Congress back together to make a decision. So the president, could repel an imminent attack and it had to be imminent. This was tested early in the history of the nation when Thomas Jefferson was president. U.S. Navy and U.S. commercial shipping in the Mediterranean was jeopardized by the Barbary Coast pirates who were kind of an early precursor to a non-state terrorist group. And Jefferson always believed, well, of course I can order a Navy ship to fire to repel an attack. At some point, he decided, well, you know, just repelling an attack isn't enough, why don't I go destroy their ship so they can't attack us any longer? And he articulated this line of thought, if I want to do more than just repel an attack,

but I want to go on offense to destroy a threat, that's when I need Congress. And so that's kind of been the understanding. You need Congress to start a war. The president executes once started, a president can repel an imminent attack. But even under that circumstance, the thought would be when the president acts, the president would need in some short period of time to get Congress to sort of ratify what the president was doing. And that's where we get to the war powers resolution in 1973. A statute can't change the constitution. So you can't by statute say, well, Congress supports to start a war, but we'll give

the president the ability to start a war. That's fine. You can't really delegate that power. The way to read the war powers resolution of 1973 and make it consistent with the framers' intent is that when a president decides, I've got to. repel an attack and maybe even to defend against an imminent threat to put American troops into military action elsewhere, I can do that on my own as commander-in-chief to repel an imminent threat, but I should get Congress involved in that within 60 days. So the War Powers Resolution says if the president takes unilateral action, the president can, but unless Congress approves within 60 days than that action and the use of troops has to stop at the end of the 90th day.

Now, you and I know, Tommy, no president of either party, frankly, no Congress of either party have really followed the War Powers Resolution. Since 73, there's a good argument that at least some pieces of it are controversial. But anyway, for purposes of the big policy, Congress is supposed to declare it, president's supposed to execute it, the president can act to defend the nation against imminent threat, but even then the idea would be you would get Congress to come in and ratify an authorized military action. That is a great laydown. Yeah. So now let's come to where we are today. And actually, I'll use something that you and I are both very familiar with, which is President Obama's decision, what to do about ISIS.

Right. ISIS is running wild in Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014. ISIS is jeopardizing areas in the Kurdish part of northern Iraq, including Erbil, the Kempiel, the Kavana. capital of the Kurdish area of northern Iraq where there's a U.S. consulate. So there are U.S. interest under some imminent threat. The president takes action in August of 2014 when Congress is on recess. We're going to put U.S. troops here to stop the advance of ISIS. He cites the U.S. consulate there, U.S. interest in the area as giving him the ability to do that. And under any view of what the president's power would be, that is actually a very fair use of the president's executive power. Within a couple of weeks, the threat to the U.S. Embassy in Erbil was over. We had done a very

good job working with the Kurds to move ISIS back. And President Obama even used the phrase when he came to the American public in September of 2014. He said, we've got to go on offense now against ISIS. And under the sort of the same rationale that Jefferson grappled with with the Barbary Coast Pirates, once the defense against the imminent threat is over, and once we need to on offense because we should defeat this terrorist group that poses jeopardy to allies in our long-term interest, that's when Congress needs to get involved. And it was at that point that I introduced my first authorization for use of military force against ISIS in accord with the vision that President Obama laid out in his address to the nation in September of 2014. There was a vote on my

authorization in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in December of 2014, a positive vote, But there was never a floor vote. And in the now nearly three years since, the president went on offense against ISIS. There's never been a floor vote. There's never been a meaningful committee vote in the House. And aside from that December of 2014, there hasn't been a willingness in the Senate either to take up the question of the legal authorization for the war against ISIS. Right. So I want to ask you about that. So in 2001, Apple debuted the iPod. The first Harry Potter movie was in theaters and Congress passed the authorization for the use of military force, which allowed us to take action against those responsible for 9-11. It's now 2017. My iPod comes with a phone. Harry Potter is 27, but the AUMF has not changed at all. It is the longest war authorization that has ever been in continual use. How is that possible? How is a response to the 9-11 attacks being used as authorization? to fight ISIS. Well, and this is a really important question, Tommy. And as you know, Senator Jeff Flake and I of Arizona have introduced recently a bipartisan authorization trying to fix a number of things that were wrong with the original 2001 version in our estimation.

But anyway, right, after the attack of 9-11, it was just three days later that Congress passed a war authorization. Of course, we rallied to a cause that President Bush called us to rally to. We had nations around the world supporting us. But as can often happen in the heat of an emergency, we didn't necessarily think it through with great precision. And of course we didn't. And 80% of Congress who's here now was not in Congress and didn't vote on the 2001 authorization.

And many who did vote never contemplated that it would still be in use, justifying military action all over the globe. So what did that authorization say? It's essentially a one-page authorization, and it gives the president the power to use all military means necessary to defeat those who perpetrated the attacks of 9-11 or those who aided and abetted in those attacks. That's the operant phrase. What were the weaknesses? 16 years later, we can look at it and other things have improved. We ought to be able to look at this authorization, having lived under it for 16 years. What were the weaknesses of that authorization? First, it didn't. It didn't. It didn't. It do a very clear job of describing who we were going against. So it's not like stating a nation. It says the perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks, but didn't even really spell out who they were. So there was a lack of specificity to some degree about who we were at war with. Because of that lack of specificity, the Bush administration and then the Obama administration, and now the Trump administration, had to create something that wasn't in the statute at all, which was a notion of, well, yeah, we can go against them, but also associated forces,

associated persons and forces. That's not included in the authorization, but the administrations cobbled together, well, of course, administratively, we can extend that to associated persons or forces, and they have utilized an incredibly broad definition of what that is, which almost means we can wage war against anybody. I'm slightly hyperbalizing, but not much. I agree. And is that as an intel? Do we decide who's associated based on classified intelligence so there's not much transparency or what's that process like? Well, it is based on intel. And look, I don't question the good faith of folks trying to make the determination. But Tommy, here's what the definition has become administratively. To be an associated force, you have to have or at one point in your life have had some connection with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. And you have to have some. intent, hostile intent against the United States or our, quote, coalition partners. Now, the list of coalition partners, nations who have helped us to one degree or another to either battle the Taliban

in Afghanistan are al-Qaeda generally. It's more than 70 nations. So as an example, you could hypothesize a terrorist group that pops up 30 years after the attack of 9-11 that says for their own branding purposes. I want to be associated with al-Qaeda because that'll make me seem like a real badass. And if they have a hostile intent against Belgium or Montenegro, well, they were

coalition partners at some point along the way. Suddenly, the war authorization that Congress passed in 2001 would allow a president to take military action against such a group, even though they had no hostile intent against the United States. So this definition of associated forces,

which was necessary because of a of specificity regarding who we were fighting against is so broad as to be essentially meaningless. Third problem, there was no duration that was listed in the authorization. So it's essentially an open-ended authorization for permanent or infinite war, which 17 years later is not a, I'm not hyperboizing to say that's a real problem. There's not a geographic limitation. So we've used the 2001 authorization, which again, we're going after the all kind of guys

who, you know, did the 9-11 attack, we've now used that authorization 37 separate times in at least 14 different nations far from where al-Qaeda was planning the 9-11 attack because of the absence of a geographic limitation. So those were kind of the key weaknesses. We didn't really describe who we were fighting against. We then had to create a completely broad and essentially permeable definition of who the associated forces were. We didn't give it any geographic limitation. We didn't give it any temporal limitation. And that's why, to answer your question, we're here 16 or 17 years later still operating under an authorization that most people feel is really out of date. I mean, just hearing you lay it out, it seems actually just absurd that this has been allowed

to linger. And look, I was a part of that lingering for four years. And we lodged a number of counterterrorism operations. We put troops into various places to deal with extremist groups. But I guess my question is, and I think I've heard you talk about this before, is, President, including Obama, just seem to blow through this ambiguity about who's in charge here. And we live in a world where we seem to muster outrage about literally anything, but there's no outcry over going to war. How much do you think that's the responsibility of the president? And how much is that, do you think that Congress just doesn't want to engage on these issues because it's tough politics? Let me be really tough on presidents and let me be tougher on Congress.

And then let me also express one of the reasons. that this is hard. So I do think presidents, and this is what Madison, you know, recognized when he was drafting this and tried to make the start decision, a congressional decision. Madison wrote a letter to Jefferson. He said, look, here's what I know about executives. And this is a paraphrase or what he wrote. But he basically said, our constitution demonstrates what the history of all governments demonstrate, that it is the executive most interested in war and thus most prone to war for this reason we have with studied care vested the question of war with the legislature. Madison was trying to basically alter the course of human history and make the start decision

a legislative decision because he recognized that history taught that executives will overreach in matters of war and executives do. And so I was tough on President Obama when I was a candidate for the Senate in 2011 and he took affirmative military action against Libya. I said, look, I support the rationale, but you can't do this without Congress. It's not an imminent defense of the United States. The fact that it has a humanitarian purpose or you're doing it in tandem with the Arab League isn't sufficient. If we're using military force, you know, if we're bombing people, they would consider a war. You've got to get Congress on board. So I've been critical of the president with respect to Libya. I didn't think he should be able to wage missile strikes against Syria after

using chemical weapons without Congress. I didn't think we should be in an offensive war against ISIS without Congress. But I'll tell you, and now under President Trump, we've had our first ground casualties, ground combat casualty in Syria. We've had our first ground combat casualty death in Yemen. We recently had an African ground casualty for the first time since the early 1990s. So President Trump is doing just what President Obama and President Trump did is doing as much of this unilateral as he can. So I'm tough on presidents. I don't think they're getting the authority they need. I'm tougher on Congress. Congress is chicken. Congress doesn't want to have a war vote. A war vote is a hard vote under any circumstances. I got a kid in the military. You know, I will say a war vote will always be different than any other vote you ever cast about anything. And, you know, those of us who have family in the military, I mean, it's even more different. It's a very grave and hard decision. I've twice voted to support military action. And it is not an easy thing. to do and a lot of members of congress want to duck it even if you're right and even if it's a just cause there's going to be casualties there's going to be you know civilian casualties there will be things that will happen that will wish hadn't happened it never works out the way you think it's going to a hundred percent

and so members of congress here's what they would rather do to Tommy they would rather not vote hide under their desk if it works out well say and you know mr. president we were with you the whole time and if it works out badly mr. president how dare that you do this. So this is what Congress does. And so it really is a defalcation of the congressional responsibility. A president doing things that the president maybe shouldn't do under Article 2 gives Congress no excuse for not doing what Congress should do under Article 1. So I really think Congress has been most to blame. But let me now lift my critique of both the president and Congress to some degree. There's a reason this is hard. And I've come to this

conclusion, having now drafted three authorizations, the one that I introduced in September of 2014, that got a committee vote and a floor vote, one that Senator Flake and I introduced in June of 2015, that never got taken up at all. And then the most recent one we've introduced, here's what I've realized in working on them. Most of what we think about when we think about war is war between nations. So a declaration of war against Germany, it's not hard to write in who we're at war with or Japan. It's not hard to write in who we're at war with. When you're up against a non-state organization, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, al-Shabaab, ISIS, it's hard to define them because they change their names all the time. They don't have a set geography. They will operate anywhere.

They don't respect Geneva conventions, the rules of war, all the things that we think about when we think about war between nation states. They don't follow any of those things. And so there is a degree of intellectual challenge in trying to define war against a non-state actor that respects none of the conventions or treaties about war. And so to lift a little bit of my critique off the President and Congress, part of the reason this has been hard is, okay, now this isn't the invasion of Kuwait to push Iraq back out. It's not a nation state thing. And these non-state actors, which are now a feature, and they will be a feature for a very long time of the world, they've complicated the whole question of defining what war is and what the limit should be. And so to some degree, that has been a reason this has been tough. But I think we have to grapple with the reality that non-state actors using violence to achieve their end. They're here to stay. And the U.S. and other nations are going to need to take action to protect our citizens from them. We still have an obligation as Congress. to authorize military action and war, but we need to change the way we think about war to some degree to reflect the reality of non-state power.

More nerdy foreign policy coming up on Pod Save the World. I want to return to this idea of a sunset provision. You know, you made the remarkable point that 80% of Congress didn't vote for the 2001 AUMF, and here we are. And I bet you that those who did vote for the authorization for the use of military force, never for a second thought we'd be in Afghanistan 16 years later. I was one, yeah, so I was very happy to read that your legislation includes a sunset provision that requires it to be reauthorized after five years. I guess my question is, why five years? That seems like potentially a considerable amount of time. Was there ever any consideration of every year? And do you think Congress also needs a role in not just starting wars, but when we should end them and putting timetables out like we saw in Iraq? I think we do. And give you an example. My co-sponsor on this new authorization is, Jeff Flake from Arizona. And Jeff was here in 2001 and voted on the 2001 authorization. And he has often said, look, I had no idea that what we were voting on would still be used in so many different countries 16, 17 years later. So he and I both strongly believe in sunsets, although what we want to do is we want to come up with a better word than sunset. Sunset kind of has a permanency sound to it in some way. True. Because the right way to say what we've put in place is this authorization. will expire in five years and less renewed. And we've set up an expedited process so that if a

president were to come to Congress and say, well, look, you know, sadly, these non-state terrorist groups are still a threat. And we still need to be involved with them. We set up an expedited process for review to determine whether it should be extended. And so that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to force a regular review so that it doesn't just run on autopilot forever. And that's an example of learning from a mistake in 2001. Why five years rather than one? Yeah, this is a good question. And this is just, you know, negotiation back and forth between Jeff Flake and me. And look, this is a bill that's going to be introduced that it would be before the Foreign Relations Committee. And you're going to hear some debate about, I'm sure, the sunset provision, whether it's,

you know, too hot, too cold, or just right. We decided we liked five years because it would, it would take it past this administration. We really intentionally believe this should be a bipartisan authorization. That, you know, the whole reason to do the authorization in the first place is not just because the Constitution requires it. It's to send a message to allies and adversaries and especially our troops that there's a consensus behind the mission. Could there be anything more or moral than deploying people to risk their lives and not reaching a consensus that the mission is worth them risking their lives about? So we want to put congressional support behind the mission and ensure our troops we support them, but we want to do it in a nonpartisan way.

And if you have a sunset that's long enough that it gets into either a second Trump term or a next president's term, I think it takes some of the partisan politics out of it. So, you know, we've talked to our military leadership enough to know, sadly, that the battle against ISIS is not going to be over quickly. You know, we're succeeding on the battlefield. We're squeezing their space down. But the more we squeeze their space down, the more they decide they should try to inspire a tragedy. in Manchester or London or the bombing of the Parliament and Mausoleum in Tehran the other day, they're going to do more and more of that, and it's going to go on for a while. So we thought five years was a fair reflection of the gravity and potential duration of this fight,

and then it would also put the question of the reauthorization outside of presidential politics. That was our hope. Makes sense. Just while we're on Afghanistan, I was just wondering what you think our goal should be there. And, you know, as when you look at the duration of the conflict and the way, troop levels have gone up and down over time and yet the international community seems so committed. I mean, what is the end game there? Because I view this from someone who did this 2009 troop refraved Senator Obama and we thought about every single reason underpinning why we were there

and the goals and objectives. And then you hear the conversation now and it feels like the same one we had then. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on Afghanistan and the reported consideration of the additional troops getting sent over. You know, I'm a huge fan of President Obama. And I think I admire what he did in so many ways. And I think history is going to judge him very favorably, but not perfectly because he's a human being, just like we all are. And I think there was a missed opportunity after the death of bin Laden in 2011, there was a real opportunity to step back and say, okay, the architect of the 9-11 attack, you know, the person who was at the head of that group of people who were specified in the 2001 authorization, the perpetratories of the attack, we're now taking him out. Now let's reassess what the purpose of the our mission is past this point. That wasn't really done in a way that I think was really reflective. And so now we're kind of in this position, okay, what is the goal in Afghanistan? We have worked very hard to help Afghanistan put together a coalition government that was difficult. Afghanistan has seen some amazing, amazing progress in things like life expectancy and literacy,

literacy of girls because of U.S. efforts that we can feel really proud of. But the issue of what is the end goal, I mean, obviously I think what we want is for the Afghan government under this coalition and then future governments to be strong enough so that Afghanistan is a society moving toward prosperity where terrorism can't mutate and grow, especially terrorism that would threaten beyond Afghanistan's borders. We certainly wouldn't want terrorism in Afghanistan to threaten the United States, but there's also a sad reality of terrorism and Afghanistan could threaten a Pakistan that has a nuclear arsenal. Or, you know, there were times in the president's administration where terrorist forces in Pakistan were not far from, you know, nuclear assets in Pakistan that had they fallen into the wrong hands could have been catastrophic. So I think the right answer about Afghanistan now is we want to promote stability and prosperity. to the point where what's going on in Afghanistan does not jeopardize outside of the Afghan, the Afghan border, the security of the world. I will say this. We're five months into a Trump administration, and we haven't had the presentation yet to the Armed Services Committee of either what I would call, they said they were going to do a 30-day review of the anti-IS strategy. They haven't come and presented, okay, here's our review and here's what we're going to do.

and they haven't really presented their Afghanistan strategy either. We're reading things about what the president wants to do with respect to troop strength and we're seeing opinions of others, but we're not getting the presentation, okay, now we've got our legs on the ground in this new administration and we've taken a look at it and here's what we think the plan is. And we need to hear that from the administration and then make some decisions. I do think while Congress has a huge role, I think the way this works best, and especially given the president's commander in chief role is for the for the administration to come forward with

a proposal here's the way we look at this and here's what we think we ought to be doing and then to have Congress just you know pepper him to death with questions and then we eventually work on something that we can feel a consensus about we have not yet seen that or done that under the Trump administration yeah they seem to be spending their time figuring out a strategy to get him to stop tweeting but you're brought and look and you know I'm I'm tough on President Trump but the first five months of any administration. They're not going to just come in, you know, right out of the gate and just have the crystal clear plan. You've got to give any new administration a little bit of time to come in and present. But now, okay, they've been there five months. Then they got to, they have some great

national security folks. General McMaster's as, you know, head of the national, as NSA. And then you've got Maddiss and General. Yeah, General Secretary Mattis is a sect. Okay, they got some really good people in place. Now is the time that they need to be laying out their vision for Afghanistan for the anti-IS fight. They have given us more on what they intend to do about North Korea, but we've got to hear from them on Afghanistan and then find a consensus. You're geeking out with me on POTSA of the World. More on the way. You made a very compelling point about these non-state actors, but in the authorization, the AMF that you put forward, you know, covers these terrorist groups and the non-state actors,

what was President Trump's legal authority to strike Syria after the chemical weapons attack? And do you think that was lawful and would that be covered on an ad hoc basis since that's government to government? I don't think it had any legal justification, Tommy. I think it had a humanitarian impulse that I agree with when President Obama wanted to take military strikes against Syria for using chemical weapons against civilians. Hey, I voted for it in the Foreign Relations Committee. Again, that never got a vote on the floor. But I felt like you need to get Congress on this. And yes, the use of chemical. weapons against civilians in violation of Geneva Convention. It's got to have a consequence. So I voted for it, but I felt like you needed to do that to have a legal justification. So I do not think that certainly the 9-11 authorization that allowed actions against the perpetrators of 9-11, that didn't authorize missile strikes against Syria.

Right. And I don't see any legal justification either domestic or international that would have provided a legal justification for these strikes. A lot of people stood up and said, oh, it's a good thing, because they thought it was a good thing that there should be a consequence if you use chemical weapons against civilians. I agree with that. But I don't think you want to ever, and sadly, we've been guilty of this in a bipartisan way. I don't think you ever want to just say a president can do whatever they want without a legal justification. And I see none. We asked, we were briefed on the Syrian missile strike two days after it happened by administration officials. And I asked,

What's the legal justification for the strike? And I was told that the answer to that is forthcoming. Well, I'm sitting here waiting. And that was months ago now. And I haven't heard one thing about what the legal justification was. It's funny. There's an entire other conversation we could have about the international legal justification. But for another day.

That's an important one, too. Yeah, it's an important one. But, you know, it's funny because on Syria, I was one of the people who saw him launch those 59 Tomahawks and was very worried about the problem of this escalating. And to his credit, it does seem to have deterred additional chemical weapons use, and the intervention was limited in its scope. So, you know, I am very happy to be wrong. But the problem of escalation is one that does worry me. You start with these limited, discrete military actions that over time they swell into major commitments of ground troops. Look at Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.

Do you think that Congress should have a bigger say in the size and scope of wars, or is that still going to be a presidential and military? prerogative. I think that is largely a commander-in-chief prerogative with one exception. So at the start of this interview, you read a little bit out Article 1 and you read a little bit out Article 2, but there's other pieces of Article 1 that you didn't read, and that's the power of the purse. So I don't think we should micromanage tactically decisions by the Commander-in-Chief. So we give the green light to start a war. However, look, if we don't like where something is going and we sit down with an administration, and we hammer it out and we just feel like they're wrong, Congress does have the ability through the power of the purse to start to restrict military action. And that's

completely consistent with congressional role. So, you know, if you are in a endless war and, you know, and it's just going on and there's nothing good that's happening about it and it's not, you know, reaching the goal that you want to, then Congress starts to grapple with, of course, you could always retract your authorization, but you can also start to deal with it through the budget. Those are the two mechanisms Congress has, the authorization and the budget, but generally not micromanaging tactics. Now, of course, we talk tactics all the time. You know, we're in armed services hearings, and we're getting briefed by the military, and we're offering our opinions and we're asking tough questions, and hopefully just like what they say affects our thinking, what we ask and say

starts to affect theirs, but we shouldn't micromanage tactics. Right. And I suppose, you know, the authorization and the spending can also help influence the taxics in the timeframes of these wars. But, Senator, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you so much for being one of the people who is pushing on this issue. I know it's important to you. I know it's personal to you, given your son's service. And the Commonwealth of Virginia, not state. I want to repeat that, is very well represented by you and Senator Warner. So thank you so much for doing the show. Virginia is best friends of the pod. Well, listen, and Tommy, I'll tell you, I really am glad you wanted to do a discussion on this because, you know, I don't know that I can completely convey why I think it's so important, but this discussion, I think, gets into some just fundamental issues. This is the 230th year of the drafting of the Constitution in Philadelphia. And, you know, if you look at what was different about the American Constitution, I mean, what was really, really different. Many of the ideas were great borrowers from other constitutions put together in a very ingenious way by Madison. and others. There were only a few things that were really unique to us and that war shouldn't be started by the executive, but instead by the legislature is one of those things that was really unique to us. And it was a great idea and it still is a great idea. I agree. Thank you, Senator. Thank you so much for doing the show. Thanks, Tommy. Glad to. Have a great day.