The Power to Declare War
Section 8 of the 1st Article of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the exclusive power to declare war where it states “Congress shall have power to…declare war;” The wise Founders of our country purposefully designed our government so that war could only be declared by the people through their congressional representatives and not by the President, nor by the Executive Branch. Historically, throughout the world monarchs and dictators used war to expand their dominions at the cost of the lives and properties of their subjects.
The last time the U.S. Congress declared war was during World War II in 1941. Since then, Presidents have unconstitutionally sent U.S. soldiers to fight in foreign wars in Korea, Vietnam, the first Iraq war, and the current Iraq war with no formal declaration of war by Congress. The terminology used today to skirt around a formal declaration of war is often for Congress to use wording such as “authorize the use of military force.” And on many different occasions, the President has even acted without the prior express military authorization from Congress, such as was the case in the Philippine-American War from 1898 to 1903 and in Nicaragua in 1927.
In October 2002, six months before the invasion of Iraq, Congressman Ron Paul offered a motion to declare war against Iraq in a meeting of the House International Relations Committee and publicly announced that he intended to vote against his motion. Henry Hyde, the committee chairman at the time, told Dr. Paul that his reference to the Constitution's sole delegation of war-making authority to Congress was “an anachronism.”
Former Secretaries of State and prominent leaders of the Council on Foreign Relations, James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher are proposing legislation to Congress entitled the “War Powers Act of 2009” that will establish rules for “consultation” between the President and Congress before sending the nation into another war. They are completely ignoring the roles established by the Constitution for Congress to send the nation to war and the President to guide the military in the war. A President may request Congress to go to war, which is exactly what Franklin Roosevelt did the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
A declaration of war by Congress would allow Congress to establish clear goals for the mobilized forces. The current war in Iraq has seen its goal changed from keeping the Iraqis from using weapons of mass destruction, to removing Saddam Hussein from power, to nation building, to warring against terrorism, and now to spreading “democracy.”
Abraham Lincoln stated “Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in war, pretending generally if not always, that the good of the people was the object. Our Convention understood this to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppression; and they resolved so to frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing the oppression upon us.”
How far we have strayed from the original contract the people of America made with its new government! As with all contracts, when one party breaches the terms, it the duty and obligation of the first party to hold the failing party accountable to the terms of the contract. If “We the People”, do not hold our government to the terms specified in the Constitution of the United States, we will allow our constitutional republic to degenerate into an oligarchy led by elitists, the result of which will surely be less freedom for American citizens. As the sage Thomas Jefferson wisely advised, “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
