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New War Powers Plan Skirts the Constitution’s Clear Wording
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John F. McManus
JBS
Friday, July 11, 2008
Two former secretaries of state spent the past year concocting a new plan to give the president a role in war-making that the Constitution does not allow.
As the Vietnam War was winding down, Congress passed the 1973 War Powers Act over President Nixon’s veto. This highly questionable measure set guidelines for any president’s future use of the nation’s armed forces in the absence of a declaration of war by Congress. In effect, it gave the president power never awarded by the Constitution. Never tested by the Supreme Court, the Act has sat unused, is criticized from all sides, and is today considered null.
For the past year, former secretaries of state James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher have chaired the bipartisan National War Powers Commission seeking to replace the 1973 Act. On July 8, they unveiled their proposal while claiming that the Constitution “ambiguously divides war powers” between the president and Congress.
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No it does not! Congress is given sole authority to send the nation to war; the role of the president is to guide the military once war has begun. There is no division of the war-making authority; all of it resides in Congress. Baker and Christopher want Congress to enact a new “War Powers Consultation Act” that will establish rules for “consultation” between the president and Congress before sending the nation into war.
As might be expected of two prominent leaders of the Council on Foreign Relations, an overly influential “think tank” that consistently favors internationalism and legal innovation over national sovereignty and the Constitution, these two sidestepped the Constitution’s clear delegation of power to Congress alone to “declare war.” A president may request such a declaration as Franklin Roosevelt did immediately after the attack at Pearl Harbor. But no president has a formal role in making such a momentous decision. Once war is declared, he is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and that’s grave responsibility enough.
In October 2002, six months before the invasion of Iraq and the start of the ongoing struggle, Congressman Ron Paul offered a motion to declare war against Iraq during a session of the House International Relations Committee. He announced that he intended to vote against his motion because he didn’t believe such a war was either necessary or desirable. He was promptly told by the committee’s chairman (the late Henry Hyde) that his reference to the Constitution’s sole grant of war-making authority to Congress was “an anachronism,” no longer worthy of consideration. Credit Mr. Hyde with accurately and flippantly reflecting the prevailing view.
There has been no congressional declaration of war since 1941. No declaration of war sent troops to fight and die in Korea, Vietnam, the Balkans, the first Iraq War, and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To launch each of these undeclared conflicts, presidents have cited weaselly-worded congressional resolutions and then relied on “authorization” supplied by the UN Security Council to proceed. How far we have strayed from the Constitution!
It is hardly surprising that, in the absence of such a clearly stated requirement, none of the wars since WW II has been won. A declaration of war establishes a goal for the forces it sends into battle. Without one, the goal can be altered. The current Iraq War has seen its goal change from barring Iraqi use of weapons of mass destruction, to removing Saddam Hussein from power, to nation building, to warring against terrorism, and now to spreading “democracy.”
All should consider the cogent warning given by Abraham Lincoln more than a decade before he became president. He wrote in a letter to a law colleague: “Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved so to frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing the oppression upon us.”
The proposal now offered by Baker and Christopher ignores the clear wording of the Constitution. Congress alone was given power to declare war. These two men and their commission want imperial power given to the office of president, the kind Abraham Lincoln and the framers of the Constitution opposed. The office of president was created mainly to execute laws passed by Congress, not to make law and certainly not to make war.
When given the chance to do so, Congress should reject the Baker-Christopher War Powers Consultation Act. No more war without the Constitution’s requirement for a formal declaration by Congress!
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July 11th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
the economy is destroyed. America can not recover untill the fed is destroyed. The fed is a private bank.
July 11th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
10-4 Andrew
July 12th, 2008 at 12:49 am
in another post i commented on there being a bank sprouting up on every corner and why that was. there outnumbering 7 eleven, circle k, ampm, ………………………………………………………….
July 12th, 2008 at 11:30 am
This country was successfully OVERTHROWN in 1913, everyone that comes to this site should know that! George Washington warned us in his fairwell address that when we give control of our currency to anyone other than congress we are doomed. When we entangle ourselves with conflicts of other nations we are doomed as a Republic. So, when the people allow their elected representatives to run roughshod over them, thet get what they desirve. A tyrant for president and trators for congressmen.
It is time for all FREE men to come to the aid of our country! Stop your bitching and start a revolution! It is OUR duty to overthrow this new “King George”. You crazy christians want this, so called, man to bring on the end-of-the-world, so you can be right about your faith.
Read the “Nag Hamaddi Library”, then think about it. Too bad that all of you will see the word ,”Gnostic”, and believe as you have been told that they are herritics. In fact, if you read it all, you will see that the current form of your belief is acctually FALSE! To quote from the Bible: and HE will decieve mankind. If I were to decieve someone, where would I begin? From the beginning.
So, mankind has been decieved from day one. The God you worship is a false God. Quote, “I am an angry and, … God, etc. How can he be, … if there is no other God? Anyway, read it for yourselves. The REAL truth will set you FREE!
July 12th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
If the people of this country have so lost control of their government that they cannnot bring themselves to organize and retake power from these greedy, warmongering liars, let them consider this statement, from the realm of those “crazy Christians” that David #4 so flippantly insults:
“A nation that lives by the sword, shall die by the sword”
By my reckoning, America is easily now the most hated nation on this planet. The next move is yours people.
July 12th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
A real clear indicator was when Capital one banks started popping up like zits on teenagers face. This was shortly after banks like WaMu that had expanded rapidly over the last few years saw major closings and an increase in surcharges and adopted the fees that had put them ahead of their competition early.
July 12th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Ok #5
Just how long has this system been in place again and you want to blame what group of people? Not to mention it was the hard-line /Christian right that not only put the “Chimp in Charge” where he is but also fills his cabinet positions and still serves as his support base. The last people that should throw stones in this case are the ones that used their personal religious beliefs and their desire to impose those ‘values’ on our greater population and fell in line behind this well moneyed knucklehead and the assortment of cowards, dirt bags and felons that comprise the Bush Whitehouse.
You really want to see change heck if I had the resources of one mega church one could start a ground swell of action in a decent amount of time, but the systemic dismantling of our natural rights and The Republic all take a back seat in their world view when compared with the need to bash Islam, gays, women ( figure that dichotomy out ) and uphold creationism.
The believers do not deserve all the blame to be sure. In fact believers should be more upset than anything because we are talking about a group that used what ‘you’ profess to be the one and true way to the mystery of the universe as a tool to defraud all of us.
July 13th, 2008 at 1:13 am
People don’t generally follow politics beyond the nightly network news, if even that.
Because of that, people aren’t aware of what small changes to the Constitution can do as far as snowballing into abuses of power.
September 17th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
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