Public Opinion & Persian Gulf War
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The decision to go to war is a difficult one for any President. The question faced is whether that decision is made entirely on the basis of a perceived military need and to what degree public opinion influences the decision. The matter has been raised recently with reference to Bosnia-Herzegovina as it seems that the administration may be holding back from doing something to help the Serbs while ascertaining the trend in public opinion. It is likely that politicians have always been concerned with how the public would react to a declaration of war, but that does not mean that Presidents have always tried to determine that reaction beforehand as a way of deciding whether or not to declare war. In an age in which polling has become a science and an on-going process for news organizations, candidates, and government agencies, and since leaders know that they can take the pulse of the public, they usually will do so. How important is this process in making the decision about the use of military force? There is no doubt that public opinion becomes extremely important after a war has been declared, and Presidents know this from the start. In the recent Persian Gulf War, the administration worked to shape public opinion and to garner support for its policies. Operation Desert Storm was viewed as one of the signal successes of the Bush Administration, in part because of this effort to shape the way the story was told. The war had its critics, but in general it was seen as
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ght. The President could also respond defensively to "repel sudden attacks," and this was the only exception to the proposition that he was not to take up arms without advance congressional authorization. The reason for this is the fear that Congress would not have time to respond in such case. Congress today can be convened more rapidly than it could in the late 18th century when the Constitution was framed, but the need for swift military response may have become even more important. While it might be true that we should preserve for the President permission to act when there is no time for Congress to do so, we should also recognize that the underlying principle is not obsolete. The decision to go to war ultimately belongs to Congress, and thus the President, having responded to what he takes to have been the emergency, is obligated under the Constitution to report to Congress what he has done as soon as possible and to await its decision whether to continue military activity. Congress in turn is under a correlative constitutional duty to consider whether the nation is to be committed to war or not. In the event no affirmative authorization is forthcoming hostilities are to be terminated (Ely, 1988, p. 22).
The decisio
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Approximate Word count = 2373
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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