authority of the war powers act limiting presidential authority to make war. so congress will complain about this but as long as it s this kind of military action, cruise missiles, bombing, that sort of thing, very unlikely congress would actually do anything about it. bill: you make a great point there, too. libya was the same thing. at the urging of then president sarkozy in france, he was the one on top of the table slamming his shoe saying you have to go after qaddafi. i made this point 45 minutes ago. we have military action right now, byron, in iraq, afghanistan, syria, a somalia, libya, yemen. this is a lot of pressure for a military that is at the ready 24/7 around the world. and it seems as if the united states appears to be the only one who is now standing up to radical islam and we re doing
friend, congress needs to work with the president to try to deal with this long term strategy lack of strategy in syria. we haven t had one for six years during the obama administration. bill: we hear from senators on both sides. he is saying that president trump needs to work with congress on future action in syria. fox news contributor, byron, good morning to you. you lay it out in theory, yes, in practice, no. in theory the president needs permission from congress to make war. in practice that s not been the way it s worked out. we ve had a couple of authorizations for military force in the last 20 years. one was for the war in iraq. the other one was after september 11th declared war on al qaeda and that authorization to use military force has been extremely flexible. presidents have cited that in the years since for several military actions. in other words, they ve said
i ve already got the authorization i need. now as far as attacking syria is concerned, if you look at president trump s letter to congress during the attack, basically what he said was i am doing this pursuant to my authority in the constitution to conduct foreign policy and as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. he said that s all i need. bill: we already have troops on the ground in syria, byron working there for some time. that s true. all of those were undertaken either under the old authorization to use military force, the one after 9/11 or on the president s authority. i think what is important to remember here is that congress will complain about it, and there is the war powers act which should require congressional authorization but no president, including donald trump, has ever recognized the