Do the Indian Wars waged on the American frontier in the 19th
century have anything to teach us about presidential war making
authority? Jim
Antle
and John
Tabin
raise that issue in their thoughtful debate about the
constitutionality of Obama’s military intervention in Libya.
Antle discounts
these military actions and says they really aren’t analogous to
military interventions overseas, arguing,
Even though the presidents fighting Indian tribes were
technically engaged in hostilities with foreign powers, they were
protecting settlers who were U.S. citizens and land that was
frequently being asserted as U.S. territory. That’s a
constitutional gray area in a way that attacking Libya is not.
Suffice it to say that if the Libyans were an indigenous people
living on U.S. soil occasionally raiding Omaha, I’d view the
president as being on much firmer constitutional ground. Custer’s
last stand doesn’t need to be the Constitution’s.
I can understand why Antle and other “non-interventionist” cons
are eager to discount the Indian wars: these conflicts were waged
incessantly throughout the 19th century and account for most
presidential war making then. The Indian wars thus make it
difficult to argue that only Congress can initiate or authorize
war.
But in fact, the Indian wars are a very fitting historical
precedent, because in significant ways the American Indians of the
19th Century are the precursors to 21st Century Islamist
terrorists.
Indeed, just as modern-day Islamists terrorize the international
frontier; so, too, did warring Indian tribes terrorize the American
frontier. Historian William Osborn estimates, in fact, that
more than 9,000 Americans were massacred by the Indians from the
16th to through the 19th centuries.
Now, obviously the analogy is inexact. Whatever their faults,
the Native Americans were not jihadists bent on dominating and
exterminating infidels. They were a largely primitive peoples who
mostly lacked the Americans’ appreciation for, and understanding
of, private property rights.
The Indians, moreover, were the victim of reciprocal cruelty at
the hands of the European settlers. (Osborn estimates that
some 7,200 Native Americans were massacred by the white men.)
Nonetheless, savage Indian terrorism on the urban frontier was very
real and a legitimate source of angst and fear by our
forbearers.
So how did American commanders in chief respond to Indian
terrorism? Not by running to Congress each and every time for an
“authorization” of war! Instead, successive presidents of the
United States, from James Monroe to Grover Cleveland, dispatched
the U.S. Army on peace-making and peace-keeping missions that
resulted in hostile fire death and injury - i.e., wars.
“The U.S. government would expend incredible resources — $1
million and 25 U.S. soldiers — for each one of these fierce,
courageous people [Indians] killed…” write historians Larry
Schweikart and Michael Allen in
A Patriot’s History of the United States.
Today, of course, America is not just a continental power, but a
world power. International trade and commerce, jet travel and
instantaneous communications have all conspired to collapse
national boundaries and make our world much smaller and more
intimate.
And so, presidential military actions and U.S. military
interventions have followed accordingly. The Western frontier has
given way to the international frontier, and the genius of the
American founding fathers has been confirmed. Because they
bequeathed to us a founding document, the Constitution, designed to
accommodate these changes.
