| >It's not a "gotcha". It's just objective fact. There were no war resolutions for Korea and Vietnam. Yeah. Not so much. While the Korean conflict was not explicitly authorized by Congress, it was tacitly approved by Congress by passing several bills that both directly and indirectly appropriated funds to prosecute the Korean conflict. That this wasn't followed up by a vote in Congress to make that official is definitely a constitutional issue, but one that SCOTUS did not address directly. You're quite correct that Congress didn't declare war or provide explicit authorization for the use of military force. That said, it's not quite as cut and dried as you make it out to be.[0][1][2] Congress gave the Executive branch explicit authorization for the use of military force in Vietnam with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution[3]. [0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C11-2... [1] https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/korea-war-powers-preced... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youngstown_Sheet_%26_Tube_Co._... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Resolution Edit: To clarify, I'm not arguing that Congress was correct in not providing explicit authorization for the Korean conflict, nor am I arguing that the Kennedy and Johnson administrations shouldn't have gone to Congress sooner to obtain authorization ala the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Rather, I'm pointing out that the situation was much more complicated than you make out WRT the Korean Conflict and that there was, in fact, explicit authorization from Congress for prosecuting the war in Vietnam. |