Paul Morigi/Justice for Vets, via Associated Press Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat of Hawaii, served in a National Guard medical unit in Iraq.
WASHINGTON Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now serving in Congress have emerged as some of the most important voices in the debate over whether to give President Obama a broad authorization for a military campaign against the Islamic State or something much more limiting.
In other conflicts, Congress shaped military policy with a certain remove from the battlefield. But as it deliberates whether to give authority for a military operation to a president for the first time since 2002, there are 26 veterans from the United States two most recent wars serving in the House and Senate, according to the group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. With firsthand knowledge of what American forces would face, those members will be able to remind colleagues of the consequences of their votes.
One of the reasons I ran for Congress was to make sure we didnt repeat the mistakes of the past, of going into war without a clear strategy, said Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat of Hawaii and an Iraq war veteran. As a member of a National Guard medical unit, she said, she wondered whether the leaders of our country and those in positions of making these decisions really understand what the impacts of their decisions were.
But while Ms. Gabbard and other veterans agree that Congress should exercise its constitutional prerogative to authorize the commander in chief to engage in military action, their conflicting views on the scope of that authority reflect the larger complexities of the debate and the difficulty the House and Senate face in any effort to draft a compromise resolution. Republicans, by and large, want to pass a broad resolution that would contain few if any limitations on the presidents ability to send forces wherever and whenever he believes he needs them. Democrats tend to support a more restricted resolution that would not open the door to another sprawling and lengthy conflict.
With the death or retirement of World War II veterans, the number of men and women in Congress who served in the military has been steadily declining. In the 1970s, roughly 70 percent of the Senate had military service, according to Donald A. Ritchie, the Senate historian. At the beginning of the current Congress, 101 members or roughly 19 percent had served or were serving in the military, according to the Congressional Research Service. There is not a single member who served in World War II.
But the number of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and their influence has been rising.
Three Republican senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Joni Ernst of Iowa, and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, all veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq were elected in November and now sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee. More than a dozen House lawmakers who are veterans of those conflicts, both Democrat and Republican, sit on the House Armed Services Committee.
They understand its easy to go to war and its tough to end it, and they understand the long-term effects in a very different way, said Paul Rieckhoff, the head of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Its especially important when the president himself is not a combat veteran.
The veterans are raising questions that the Obama administration will have to answer about its military commitments abroad, from the precise role that ground troops should play to whether the three-year time frame that Mr. Obama has proposed for fighting the Islamic State is correct. Many say their experience in Iraq and Afghanistan taught them that the American military cannot fix what is fundamentally a cultural and political issue: the inability of governments to thwart extremism within their own borders.
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Bringing a Rare Perspective to Authorizing War