<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/opinion/12yoochu.html> February 12, 2007 Op-Ed Contributors Why Are the Pacifists So Passive? By LYNN CHU and JOHN YOO
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Of course, they haven't been silent about the war: both the House and Senate last week were political circuses, juggling various bills that proposed to "rein in" the president. But behind all the bluster, the one thing all the major Democratic proposals have in common is that they are purely symbolic resolutions, with all the force of a postcard. (Two other Democratic Senate proposals that have actual teeth — one by Russell Feingold to cut off money for the war, another by Barack Obama to mandate troop reductions — were ignored by the leadership.)
The fact is, Congress has every power to end the war — if it really wanted to. It has the power of the purse. Its British forebears in Parliament micromanaged the monarchy quite a bit, for instance by making money (the "sinews of war") contingent on attacking one country and making peace with another. And there is more direct precedent: In 1973, Congress affirmatively acted to cut off funds for Vietnam. It also cut off money for the Nicaraguan contras with the Boland Amendment in 1982.
Not only could Congress cut off money, it could require scheduled troop withdrawals, shrink or eliminate units, or freeze weapons supplies. It could even repeal or amend the authorization to use force it passed in 2002.
A pullout, however, would have no chance of success, because its supporters are likely to lack the two-thirds majority necessary to override a presidential veto. But to stop President Bush's proposed troop surge, Congress doesn't have to do anything. It can just sit back and fail to enact the periodic supplemental spending measures required to keep the war going. Congress has wielded considerable power by just threatening such measures, as with President James K. Polk in the Mexican-American War and President Ronald Reagan in Lebanon after the 1983 barracks bombing.
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Lynn Chu is a lawyer in New York. John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003, is a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
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