WASHINGTON — The United States is teetering on the brink of war with Iraq. Edgy citizens brace for terrorist retaliation. The United Nations is consumed by the looming conflict. The Turkish and British parliaments are riven over U.S. war plans.
But back in "the world's greatest deliberative body," the U.S. Senate spent most of last week mired in a partisan brawl over a single federal judge. The House, meanwhile, squabbled over a tax bill laden with special-interest goodies and passed a resolution mourning the death of Mister Rogers.
The disconnect between Congress' parochial preoccupations and the sense of historic peril abroad is a striking reminder that U.S. lawmakers have put themselves squarely on the sidelines of impending war against Iraq.
In voting last fall to give President Bush unchecked power to decide whether and when to launch an assault on Iraq, Congress essentially delegated its constitutional power to declare war. That's not unprecedented, but analysts say Congress's role in the Iraq debate has been more deferential to the president than in past conflicts such as the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
"The Senate's role has become cheerleading," said Joel Silbey, a political historian at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Its members "seem to succumb to presidential predominance in a very supine way."
That pains no one more than the Senate's senior Democrat, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. He is the self-appointed guardian of the Senate's constitutional prerogatives and traditions -- the chamber that is supposed to have the largest role in foreign policy and that has been the scene of many great debates about issues of war and peace.
"We stand passively mute ... paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events," Byrd said in a recent Senate speech. "We are truly 'sleepwalking through history.' "
Byrd's speech spread like wildfire around the world through newspapers and the Internet.
Stung by such criticism, Senate leaders set aside three hours Friday morning for senators to give speeches on Iraq.
Democratic leaders -- and the party's presidential hopefuls -- have begun to step up their criticism of Bush's prewar diplomacy in the face of crumbling support at the United Nations.
But war critics say the speeches and the rhetoric are too little too late, coming months after Congress gave Bush the go-ahead for military action.
