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The debate over the President's power to send in the Marines without congressional approval is nearly as old as the Republic. The Constitution is ambiguous on the matter. On the one hand, it designates the President as Commander in Chief of all U.S. military forces. On the other, it gives Congress the power to "declare war" and "raise armies." In practice, Presidents have traditionally enjoyed wide latitude in sending U.S. troops into dangerous situations, and Congress has rarely complained. But in the early 1970s, many legislators were troubled that Presidents Johnson and Nixon had been able to send hundreds of thousands of American troops into combat in Viet Nam without a formal declaration of war. When the Watergate scandal broke, Congress was emboldened to put limits on such presidential prerogatives and to assert its own power.
The War Powers Resolution has occasionally been honored—as in 1980, when Jimmy Carter notified Congress of the attempt to rescue the U.S. hostages in Tehran, though his message came shortly after the mission had failed. But in the decade since the resolution's passage, there have been relatively few occasions on which its effectiveness could be tested, and no situations as complicated and potentially momentous as the present dilemma in Lebanon.