Senator Jim Webb announced legislation to require Congressional approval before the President could take military action for so-called “humanitarian interventions,” where U.S. armed forces might respond to crises abroad but American interests are not directly threatened.

“Year by year, skirmish by skirmish, the role of the Congress in determining where the U.S. military would operate, and when the awesome power of our weapon systems would be unleashed has diminished,” said Senator Webb, who served as a combat Marine in Vietnam, a journalist covering the U.S. military in Beirut and Afghanistan, and an Assistant Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Navy. “In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, especially with the advent of special operations forces and remote bombing capabilities, the Congress seems to have faded into operational irrelevance.... We have now reached the point that the unprecedented - and quite frankly contorted - Constitutional logic used by this Administration to intervene in Libya on the basis of what can most kindly be called a United Nations standard of ‘humanitarian intervention,’ was not even subject to full debate or a vote on the Senate floor.”

Read Senator Webb’s full statement here and watch his floor speech on the legislation here.