Jackson Jambalaya

As the U.S. became increasingly mired in the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon had relied on the solid support of cold warriors in Congress to support his authority to both wage and escalate that war through presidential authority.

Few members of Congress had been more staunchly anti-Communist or more supportive of a strong executive branch than Mississippi U.S. Sen. John C. Stennis, D-DeKalb. Republican Nixon openly courted the support of Stennis and fellow Mississippi U.S Sen. Jim Eastland, D-Doddsville, as evidenced by his rush to aid Mississippi in the wake of 1969’s Hurricane Camille.

With Stennis chairing the Senate Armed Services Committee and Eastland chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee, Nixon needed and valued their support. But Stennis, after years of U.S. engagement in Southeast Asia, had become convinced that Congress needed to assert a stronger role in the constitutional power to make war.

Along with Republican New York U.S. Sen. Jacob Javits, Stennis offered a war powers bill in 1971 and again in 1972, but the effort failed amid disagreements with the House over the bill's language.

Stennis, after watching years of anti-war protests and the nightly TV news carnage of the “living room war” from Vietnam, expressed fears that the U.S. had slipped “gradually into a war that does not have the moral support and sanction of the American people.” He believed in restoring the constitutional balance of war powers between the White House and Congress.

In 1973, Stennis successfully led the War Powers Resolution to passage. Nixon vetoed the bill, but Congress overrode the veto, and the bill became law. As Stennis himself put it when introducing the measure: the decision to go to war was “too big a decision for one mind to make and too awesome a responsibility for one man to bear.” Stennis said: “By putting the War Powers Bill on the statute books, we will be taking a long step toward assuring that Congress will fulfill its responsibilities and that there will be sounder and more unified national judgments in the future on the question of whether or not to commit this nation to war.”

The 1973 resolution required consultation in “every possible instance” with Congress before deploying U.S. troops into combat, required the President to submit a written report to Congress within 48 hours of hostilities or imminent hostilities, and required that troops be withdrawn within 60 days unless Congress ratifies the action. Fast-forward to today – Mississippi U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker sits in that same powerful Senate Armed Services chairmanship. But the posture is markedly different. In recent years, Wicker has been a stalwart supporter of supplying Ukraine with weapons in the face of the Russia–Ukraine War, calling for “more, better, and faster” deliveries so Ukraine can prevail.

In July, Wicker said regarding Ukraine: “I hope President Trump’s decision to accelerate military aid to Ukraine and to threaten crippling sanctions will drive this conflict closer to its end. The president should have every tool available to increase pressure on Putin. To that end, I will continue working with my colleagues in Congress and with officials at the Pentagon to rebuild the arsenal of democracy and improve the president’s ability to use European money to arm Ukraine.”

But in recent days, Wicker is one of several congressional Republicans asking questions about the boat strikes. Investigations are ongoing in both Wicker’s Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee over the Trump administration’s boat strikes in the Caribbean and in the Pacific.

The fact is that since 9/11 and the end of the Cold War, Congress has shifted from the culture that Stennis helped create of strong congressional influence and, if necessary, intervention in presidential war powers to one of more passive oversight. The boat strikes are one of the first issues to raise significant congressional ire in many years.

Stennis, known as the father of the modern U.S. Navy, never served in the military. Wicker served 4 years of active duty in the U.S. Air Force and 23 years in the Air Force Reserve. Both understood the role the military plays in maintaining global freedoms. Like Stennis before him, Wicker is asking the right questions about presidential war powers.

Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.