posted February 14, 2007 09:09 AM            

A man carried antiwar signs outside an appearance by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Keene, N.H., on Sunday. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

By Peter Canellos, Globe Columnist | February 13, 2007

WASHINGTON -- When Hillary Rodham Clinton declared in New Hampshire last weekend that she had merely voted to give President Bush "the authority to send inspectors back in to determine the truth" in Iraq, and not "to authorize preemptive war," she was putting her own generous spin on a resolution that was unambiguous in granting the power to go to war in Iraq.

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Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts A president doesn't need the Senate's permission to dispatch inspectors, and the Iraq inspectors weren't representing the American government anyway. Moreover, Iraq had already promised to renew inspections before the Senate voted on the war authorization in October 2002.

Nonetheless, Clinton was alluding to a persuasive argument at the time: Since Saddam Hussein had been defying the United Nations, and only the threat of US force had prompted him to let weapons inspectors return, what would happen if the Senate refused to authorize force? Presumably, Hussein would wait a little while and then bounce the inspectors out.

The run-up to the Iraq war actually demonstrated the usefulness of force -- when kept in its sheath. As soon as Hussein realized that the United States was serious about unleashing its military might, he capitulated. And the authorization vote in Congress kept the pressure on.

The Bush administration, for reasons that historians will debate for hundreds of years, chose instead to shift demands, ridiculing the inspections as a "scavenger hunt," and demanding that Hussein produce unspecified evidence that decades-old weapons had been destroyed.

So war came. And very soon the limits of military force became painfully apparent.

Now, with the New York senator facing the same gantlet of questions about her authorization vote as Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts did, it's unlikely that any senator or House member will support a war resolution just to put pressure on another nation.

Like Clinton, Kerry said he was only giving Bush the leverage to force Hussein to comply with the United Nations. That might, in fact, have been their motivation -- but it wasn't seen that way by Bush: The president continues to cite the authorization vote as proof that Congress had seen "the same intelligence" and came to "the same conclusion."

So now there should be no ambiguity: Authorizing force means supporting a war. And, as such, far fewer members of Congress are likely to go along with future resolutions.

That's too bad, because the unwillingness of Congress to authorize force where it could be used for diplomatic leverage would constrain US foreign policy. It could also, paradoxically, make war more likely.

As hawks in the Bush administration have pointed out, the threat of US military action is the best way to prevent nations from pursuing nuclear weapons. If Congress were unwilling to authorize force absent a clear provocation, then the US military arsenal would cease to be a deterrent to countries seeking nuclear weapons or helping terrorists.

And there's another way that reluctance to authorize force could make war more likely. Presidents have long asserted the right to launch military attacks without congressional approval. Usually, such actions are limited in scope (like the missiles aimed at Osama bin Laden in Sudan in 1998) or part of peacekeeping missions that don't reach the level of full-scale wars. Nonetheless, if an administration felt that Congress was unwilling to authorize war except in extreme situations, the administration would be tempted to stretch the limits of its own powers, launching attacks without any congressional oversight.

This is all very relevant, since the Bush administration is preparing a dossier against Iran, charting all the ways that Iranians have aided insurgents in Iraq. The greater fear is that Iran is building a nuclear weapon -- as evidenced by its continued efforts to enrich uranium -- and will use it to dominate the Persian Gulf region.

There is, of course, vastly stronger evidence of a nuclear program than any proffered against Iraq. And a threat of force might actually be useful in wringing concessions -- or, at least, it would have been useful, if the US weren't so bogged down next door in Iraq.

The new Democratic-led Congress will be wary of giving Bush the authority to go to war in Iran. That reluctance, combined with Bush's desire to prove US power isn't hobbled by Iraq, could make a strike against Iran more likely.

And then, the Senate would have nothing to answer for.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/02/13/decision_against_war_could_also_backfire/

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