Constitution
War With Iran? Who Decides?
October 6, 2007
Anyone following the growing political debate about whether or not we should go to war against Iran knows that both pundits and politicians assume that the decision is the president’s to make.
But though this perception is fairly widespread, its not universal. In fact, a contrary point of view is occasionally aired by the mainstream media. Such was the case with the Fox News GOP presidential candidate debate in Durham, New Hampshire, on September 5. During the debate, moderator Brit Hume presented Congressman Ron Paul with a scenario that the next president may face regarding Iran. As described by Hume: “Its [Iran’s] nuclear program has continued to advance. UN weapons inspectors … are now saying that it appears that Iran is on the verge of being able to produce and may even be producing nuclear weapons…. Cross-border incidents in Iraq involving elements of the Revolutionary Guard … continue to increase and are a continuing problem for U.S. forces there. In addition, the threats by Iran’s leader against Israel have become more pronounced and more extreme.” Hume then asked Paul: “What do you do?”
Congressman Paul began his answer by pointing out: “For one thing, one thing I would remember very clearly is the president doesn’t have the authority to go to war — he goes to the Congress.”
But Brit Hume appeared a bit puzzled with Paul’s point that the president does not have the authority to go to war. “What do you do?” he asked the congressman. “So what do you do?” he repeated. Paul answered: “He goes to the Congress and finds out if there’s any threat to our national security.”
Under our system of government, Paul is correct. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution expressly states: “The Congress shall have power … to declare war.” This means, of course, that the president does not possess this power. But how many of our fellow citizens know this? And how many know why the Founding Fathers assigned this power to Congress and not the president?
Undoubtedly, many of our fellow citizens, including perhaps Brit Hume, do erroneously believe that the decision to go to war is the president’s to make. Many Americans, after all, have been misled by media reports that focus on whether the president will take the nation into another war, as opposed to whether the Congress will declare war. And of course, many have been misled by the fact that after World War II U.S. presidents have acted as if the decision to go to war is theirs to make, with Congress allowing this usurpation to take place.
George W. Bush is no exception. In March of 2003, he launched an offensive war against Iraq without a congressional declaration of war. The previous fall, Congress had passed a resolution that essentially authorized the president to make the decision, thereby shirking its own responsibility under the Constitution. When the president launched the invasion of Iraq the following spring, he said he was doing so to enforce UN resolutions requiring Iraq to get rid of its reputed weapons of mass destruction. But he did not cite any congressional requirement to justify his action because there was none.
Bush has even explicitly claimed that he decides when America goes to war. For instance, in his January 28, 2003 State of the Union address, less than two months before launching the war against Iraq, he claimed: “Sending Americans into battle is the most profound decision a President can make.” On December 18, 2005, in an address to the nation on Iraq, he said: “As your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq.”
Obviously, much of the responsibility for going into Iraq does belong to the president. After all, he made the decision. But some of the responsibility for our Iraq debacle also falls on Congress for ignoring its congressional responsibility and bowing to presidential usurpation. But that aside, there is no question that the president not only does not possess the authority to go to war but should not possess that authority.
When the Founding Fathers formed our constitutional republic, they recognized the inherent danger in giving a single person — the president or anyone else — the awesome power to make war. As James Madison, the father of our Constitution, put it in a letter to Thomas Jefferson on April 2, 1798: “The constitution supposes, what the History of all governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has, accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.”
full article:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/5787