Eugene Robinson: Why are we in Niger, and why doesnt Congress know?
The Trump administration, its foreign policy largely shaped by military men, urgently needs to tell Congress and the American people what we’re doing in Niger — and where else we’re doing it.
Like most Americans, I had no idea that roughly 800 U.S. troops were deployed in the arid, landlocked West African nation, where four soldiers were killed in an ambush on Oct. 4. Much more troubling is the fact that many key members of Congress — including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York — were clueless as well.
“We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, a champion of the war against terrorism, said Sunday.
President Trump, you will recall, promised during the campaign to scale back military deployments overseas. Of course, he promised a lot of things he cannot or will not deliver on. But he has a duty to let Americans know to what ends U.S. military force is being used around the world — and where our troops are being sent into harm’s way. The weeklong focus on Trump’s phone call with the widow of one of the soldiers slain in Niger obscures the central question: Why were they there in the first place?
The Constitution gives Congress, and only Congress, the authority to declare war. U.S. troop deployments in Niger, Yemen, Somalia and many other countries — some we still may not know about — are being justified under umbrella laws, such as the 2001 authorization to use military force against al-Qaida, or even the 1973 War Powers Resolution.
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