The four-year-old war in Iraq has revived constitutional arguments about the limits of congressional and presidential powers. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.ĭecades later, Congress again is skirmishing over how to bring Americans home from a war the public largely opposes but that the president insists is a noble mission and many lawmakers say cannot be abandoned. “Mansfield considered the war in Vietnam to be the greatest tragedy of his times and his inability to head it off, his greatest failure,” said Oberdorfer, a journalist and professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. “I think Mansfield’s experience shows that political persuasion can only go so far if a president refuses to be persuaded,” said Don Oberdorfer, who wrote a biography of the Montana lawmaker who died in 2001. involvement in Vietnam.Ĭongress spent years debating a slew of resolutions and funding limits on the Indochina war but failed to stop it or cut off funding for all combat operations until after the United States pulled its ground troops out of Vietnam in 1973. As Senate majority leader from 1961-1977, he tried many times publicly and privately to end U.S. REUTERS/Ira Schwarz/FILEīut Democrats who look back at Mansfield’s experience may not be encouraged.
A large portrait of Mansfield, dogged Democratic foe of the Vietnam war, hangs near the Senate chamber where a new generation of Democrats is trying to stop another unpopular conflict - in Iraq. Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield (C) after Shultz presented him with a plague during his retirement ceremony in this undated photo.
Former Secretary of State George Shultz (R) shakes hands with the U.S.
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