Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

Congress should enact a No Presidential Wars statute that defines “presidential wars;” declares them contrary to the Constitution’s Declare War Clause; and, makes presidential wars prospectively impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors justifying removal from office under Article II, section 4.
This will make America great, prosperous, and invincible against aggression faster and surer than any alternative. The United States is currently engaged in nine presidential wars: Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Al Qaeda, and ISIS. Every soldier involved in these engagements should be redeployed to the United States with enhanced pay for invincible self-defense. The fully allocated cost of fighting presidential wars since 9/11 approaches a staggering $10 trillion.
War is the oldest scourge of mankind.
It turns children into orphans, wives into widows, and makes fathers bury sons rather than sons bury fathers.
It silences the law, crushes liberty, aggrandizes executive power, spirals debt, diverts genius from production to destruction, promotes secret government, precipitates blowback, and afflicts our own soldiers with PTSD generated suicides. Alexis de Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America, “All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.”
Thousands of years of history taught the Constitution’s authors that the executive would be predisposed towards war to enhance power, to excite patriotic support, to operate secret and unaccountable government, and to leave a legacy.
In contrast, the legislative branch is a highly risk-averse talking shop which will only take the nation from peace to war in response to actual aggression against the United States. Gratuitous wars have nothing in them for Members of Congress. Their powers and stature are eclipsed by an omnipotent president. They win no fame or remembrance. Congress has declared war in only five conflicts since its birth 227 years ago, and only when Members were convinced the United States had been attacked.
Everyone who participated in the drafting, debating, and ratifying the Constitution highly distrusted the presidency in matters of war and peace. They unanimously entrusted to Congress exclusive responsibility for taking the nation to war in Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution. The authors did not believe the power of the purse would be sufficient to prevent presidential wars. They knew once the president commits troops, Members of Congress would be forced to provide funding under the banner of patriotism. The universal sentiment was expressed by James Madison in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Govts demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legisl.”
Despite the clarity of the constitutional prohibition, presidents have chronically decided to take the nation from peace to war since at least President Harry Truman’s decision to fight the Korean War in 1950 without a congressional declaration. Fueled by a multi-trillion dollar military-industrial-counterterrorism complex, presidential wars have come to dominate the nation’s budget and agenda. The warfare state has given birth to the surveillance state, the bail-out state, and the welfare state. The federal government has ballooned into a $4.3 trillion Leviathan.
Congress and the American people have generally ignored the lawlessness of presidential wars and the havoc they have wrought both at home and abroad. We are imitating all previous empires in our enthusiasm for self-ruination. Presidential wars have become de facto constitutional. This must change.
Through a No Presidential Wars statute, Congress needs to establish rules defining and sanctioning presidential wars prospectively. The law should warn before it strikes. And nothing good can come from taking up arms against history.

Presidential wars should be defined as wars in which the President decides to take the United States from a state of peace to a state of war. It should not include wars in which Congress has decided itself to take the nation from peace to war. Neither should it include cases in which the President responds with proportionate military force in national self-defense against actual or imminent aggression or a declaration of war against the United States by a foreign nation or non-state actor. But presidential wars should include cases in which the President unilaterally decides to make the United States a co-belligerent in an ongoing war by systematically or substantially supplying one of the warring parties with war materials, military troops, trainers or advisors, military intelligence, financial support or its equivalent. Presidential wars should further be defined to include cases where an incumbent continues an unconstitutional presidential war commenced by a predecessor.
The “No Presidential Wars” statute should also declare that a violation will be deemed a high crime and misdemeanor under Article II, section 4, and will cause the President to be impeached by the House, convicted by the Senate, and removed from office.
It would mark the Constitution’s finest hour, and save the Republic from destruction.

Follow Bruce Fein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brucefeinesq
Original: Huffington Post

Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

The United States was born 240 years ago with a shield that proclaimed, “Peace, Independence, Liberty.”
It marked an inflection point in the human narrative. For thousands of years, mankind had exalted warriors and nations who turned children into orphans, wives into widows, and had fathers bury sons rather than sons bury fathers in chronic wars for the sake of power, riches and the adolescent thrill of domination.
Our forefathers, in contrast, risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to give birth to a nation whose glory was liberty and whose march was the march of the mind. The ultimate goal of the United States would not be power, domination, or conquest; it would be a fair opportunity for citizens to develop their faculties and pursue their ambitions free from domestic or foreign predation. President Thomas Jefferson elaborated in his First Inaugural Address: “[P]eace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” Julius Caesar’s notorious, “I came, I saw, I conquered,” was sharply repudiated.
Through the singular genius of James Madison, the United States generally honored the sacrifices of Lexington and Concord for more than a century. The sage father of the Constitution entrusted to Congress alone (Article I, section 8, clause 11) responsibility for crossing the Rubicon from peace to war—a euphemism for legalizing murder. The legislative personality, he understood, was highly risk-averse, and would accept responsibility for the scourge of war only in self-defense. Confirming Madison’s wisdom, Congress has declared war but five times in 227 years, and only in cases of actual or perceived foreign aggression against the United States.
But for the last 70 years, we have crucified the Constitution on a cross of multi-trillion dollar gratuitous presidential wars that have crippled liberty; empowered the President to assassinate citizens at will based on secret evidence; impoverished the people; turned genius from production to destruction; and, awakened enemies who would otherwise self-destruct in internecine warfare. At present, we are engaged in nine (9) presidential wars in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and against ISIS and Al-Qaeda everywhere on the planet. Their collateral damage has included making children orphans, wives widows and fathers dig graves for their sons. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s worst nightmare of a multi-trillion dollar military-industrial-counterterrorism complex occupying all the corridors of power has come true.
Mr. Madison did not foresee that his constitutional handiwork would not be self-correcting. He did not foresee a Congress controlled by craven, narcissistic, invertebrate, pygmies exhibiting a complacency in the face of constitutional peril indistinguishable from waltzing on the Titanic as the iceberg neared.
Only enlightened citizens can save the Republic from self-ruination. It will include wars with China and Russia and a plunge into bankruptcy precipitated by an unsustainable multi-trillion dollar national debt.
Citizens must first exercise the vote to exclude from Congress any candidate unpledged to impeach, convict, and remove from office any President who begins or continues war without a congressional declaration.
They must also inculcate a cultural repudiation of war except in self-defense. To borrow from Abraham Lincoln:
“Let opposition to war not in self-defense, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;—let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let is become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its alter.”

We should not be starry-eyed. The probability of failure is as great as that faced by the unknown heroines who first denounced slavery and the subjugation of women thousands of years before their prohibition or amelioration. Although the heroines were instantly exterminated by slave owners or misogynists, they deserve votive offerings as saints. Where would we be now if they had not spoken truth to power?
The human condition improves when men and women honor the motto: “If it’s the right thing to do, do it.”


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More:Presidential Wars Declare War Clause War Only In Self-defense

Original: Huffington Post

Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

The United States Supreme Court should recognize the standing of citizens to challenge the constitutionality of presidential wars. It is our last best hope to regain the Republic. Over the past century, we have become dictatress of the world through a toxic combination of presidential usurpations and congressional derelictions. Our glory is no longer liberty, but domination and force.
In addressing war, the Constitution’s makers painted in prime colors, not pastels or chiaroscuro. Every participant in the drafting, debating, and ratifying of the document understood that under Article I, section 8, clause 11, only Congress was empowered to cross the Rubicon from a state of peace to war. The sole exception was presidential power to “repel sudden attacks.” Presidential wars were anathema for reasons James Madison, father of the Constitution, related to Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence:
“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.”
Even Alexander Hamilton, the most ardent proponent of a muscular presidency, in Federalist 69 applauded the Constitution’s exclusive entrustment of the war power to Congress.
Despite the constitutional clarity, Congress has yielded or surrendered its war power to the President. It began with the Korean War in 1950. The surrender has not divided the major parties. Both Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate recoil from the responsibility for deciding on war or peace in the manner of a dog retreating to its kennel when danger appears. The Members are highly risk-averse professional politicians. They calculate that the safest political posture is to pass the buck to the President, but carp at the commander in chief if the war goes south—irresponsibility more to be marveled at than imitated.
At present, presidential wars are ongoing in seven countries: Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. There are additional presidential wars against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Qaeda everywhere on the planet.
Congressman Walter Jones (R-N.C.), on behalf of himself and as many as three dozen other House Members, has written at least five (5) letters to the House Speaker asking for debate and votes on these presidential wars. Each and every letter has been completely ignored. Congressional leadership does not want a vote. Neither does the majority of the rank and file.
In 2013, Congress balked at President Barack Obama’s request for a vote to commence war against Syria over suspected use of chemical weapons. But in September 2014, President Obama unilaterally began bombing Syria anyway ostensibly to degrade and destroy ISIS in a war with no discernable endpoint. Congress did nothing about the presidential usurpation.
In 1999, Congress voted down a declaration of war and an authorization for the use of military force in Kosovo. President William Jefferson Clinton, nevertheless, conducted a 79-day bombing and cruise missile campaign. Congress did nothing to defend its war prerogative.
The eagerness of Congress to surrender its war power to the President does not cure the flagrant violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers. It constitutes a structural Bill of Rights to protect the American people from tyranny. The Supreme Court said as much in Boumediene v. Bush (2008). Justice Robert Jackson, chief Nuremburg prosecutor, also elaborated in Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer (1952) that, “[T]he Constitution diffuses power the better to secure liberty.”
Since Congress is in pari delicto with the President, however, the best strategy for enforcing the Constitution’s prohibition of presidential wars is citizen suits against the President in federal courts. According to the Declaration of Independence, citizens have both a right and duty to throw off despotic governments. A citizen’s right to challenge the tyranny of presidential wars in federal court seems a lesser included right.
The life of the law, however, has been power rather than justice. Legal theories bend to accommodate the establishment—the power elite. Federal courts have generally denied citizens standing to challenge the constitutionality of presidential wars to avoid upsetting the multi-trillion dollar military-industrial-counterterrorism complex. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes lectured that, “The power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully.” It matters not that the war is more ill-conceived than Athens self-ruinous attack on Syracuse in 415 B.C.
But the precedents against citizen standing are unconvincing.
The United States Supreme Court declared in Flast v. Cohen (1968) that the gist of the question of standing is whether the party seeking relief has alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions.
Citizen-Plaintiffs clearly have deep personal stakes in escaping the calamities of presidential wars not in self-defense.
War impoverishes and oppresses the citizenry. Abraham Lincoln elaborated: “The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: 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 to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”
The presidential wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone have squandered a staggering $6 trillion in exchange for more upheaval and international terrorism—the worst investment ever made in the history of mankind. The lives of Americans would have been much improved if that sum had been dedicated to building or upgrading schools, roads, bridges, airports, water treatment facilities, or other infrastructure.
War aggrandizes executive power and crushes individual liberty. A nation is free to the extent the executive is removed from the war power. James Madison explained:
“In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man; not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
Hence it has grown into an axiom that the executive is the department of power most distinguished by its propensity to war: hence it is the practice of all states, in proportion as they are free, to disarm this propensity of its influence.”
Alexander Hamilton added in Federalist 8:

“Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.”
And Alexis de Tocqueville echoed in Democracy in America:

“All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it.”

Thus, presidential wars against which Madison warned have crippled liberty. The President plays prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any person on the planet the Commander in Chief decrees is an imminent danger to national security based on secret, unsubstantiated evidence. On his say-so alone, the President spies on the entire population to gather foreign intelligence. Military commissions supersede Article III civilian courts in the prosecution crimes that are not international war crimes. Persons are detained indefinitely without accusation or trial. Secrecy displaces transparency in the conduct of public affairs. The President invokes state secrets to frustrate judicial redress for the constitutional wrongs of government, including assassinations, torture, and kidnappings.
Cicero was right. “In time of war, the law falls silent.” Perpetual presidential wars signal the end of the rule of law and the reduction of citizens to serfs.
War further endangers citizens by risking lethal blowback. The 9/11 international terrorist murders can be traced to President George H.W. Bush’s war in 1991 war to expel Iraq from Kuwait. The President’s ulterior motive was to protect Saudi Arabia and its oil from the clutches of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Thus, our troops remained in Saudi Arabia after Saddam had surrendered.
Osama bin Laden’s two fatwas before 9/11—in 1996 and 1998—threatened the United States with jihad because we were occupying Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, the two holiest places of Islam, and we were strangling Iraq. The fatwas said nothing about hating the freedoms American citizens enjoy.
The Orlando Pulse nightclub murderer suggested at several points in communicating with the police that his motivation was to stop the United States from killing Muslim women and children in Syria and Iraq.
The most convincing evidence of blowback fueled by our multiple presidential wars in the Middle East and South Asia derives from exchanges between United States District Judge Miriam Cederbaum and convicted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American.
Judge Cedarbaum asked whether Mr. Shahzad intended the bombs to explode. Oh yes, Shahzad told her. He explained that he chose Times Square on a Saturday night so he could maximize the mayhem: “Yes. Damage to the building and to injure or kill people. But again, I would point out one thing in connection to the attack, that one has to understand where I’m coming from, because this is... I consider myself a mujahid, a Muslim soldier. The US and the NATO forces, along with 40, 50 countries, has attacked the Muslim lands. We...”
Cedarbaum interrupted: “But not the people who were walking in Times Square that night. Did you look around to see who ‘they’ were?”
Shahzad: “Well, the people select the government. We consider them all the same. The drones, when they hit...”
Cederbaum: “Including the children?”
Shahzad: “Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don’t see children, they don’t see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It’s a war, and in war, they kill people. They’re killing all Muslims.”
Cederbaum: “Now we’re not talking about them; we’re talking about you.”
Shahzad: “Well, I am part of that. I am part of the answer to the US terrorizing the Muslim nations. I’m avenging the attacks because the Americans only care about their people, but they don’t care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die.” 

Recognizing citizen standing to challenge presidential wars and entering a declaratory judgment against one or more presidential wars would end the Supreme Court’s role in holding the President accountable for the usurpations. If voluntary compliance with the Court’s decree was not forthcoming, the responsibility would lie with Congress to impeach and convict the President of the high crime and misdemeanor of defying the ruling, and remove the President from office.
We can ask no more or less from the judicial branch.

Follow Bruce Fein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brucefeinesq

Original: Huffington Post

Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

The United States has become a multi-trillion dollar presidential warfare state shattering our liberty-centered constitutional universe for which a steep was paid by the Founding Fathers.
Gratuitous presidential wars have spiraled the national debt past $20 trillion; spawned indiscriminate government spying on “not-yet-guilty” citizens in the name of foreign intelligence; and, subordinated civilian justice to spurious claims of military necessity, for instance, limitless presidential power to play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any American the President decrees is an imminent danger to national security based on secret, unsubstantiated evidence forever shielded from external review.
At present, the United States is fighting presidential wars in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) everywhere on the planet without congressional declarations of war as required by Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution.
Presidential wars are unconstitutional relics of King George III’s monarchy. Alexander Hamilton elaborated in Federalist 69:
“The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.”
Four decades ago, a President said, “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” That scorn for the law provoked articles of impeachment and resignation. Today, when the President echoes that scorn, Congress yawns.
To restore constitutional governance and liberty as our glory, every Member of the United States House of Representatives or House candidate should be required to sign the pledge appended below:
 
No Presidential Wars Pledge
Whereas war is too important to be left to a single individual or group;
Whereas James Wilson, during Pennsylvania’s debates to ratify the United States Constitution, spoke for every participant in the drafting and ratification process in declaring: “This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress, for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large;—this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives; from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion, that nothing but our national interest can draw us into a war;”
Whereas the understanding of Mr. Wilson was enshrined in Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution, which provides that Congress shall have the power “To declare War.”
Whereas during 227 years of national life, Congress has declared war on but five occasions, and only in cases of actual or perceived aggression against the United States;
Whereas presidents have commenced wars not in self-defense against scores of state or non-state actors without congressional declarations since World War II;
Whereas war impoverishes the people, endangers our soldiers, silences the law, risks blowback, awakens enemies, and diverts national genius from production to destruction;
Whereas James Madison, father of the Constitution, wrote to Thomas Jefferson: “”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.”
Whereas Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution provides that the “President...shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors;”
Whereas Alexander Hamilton elaborated in Federalist 65 that impeachable “offenses...proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”
Whereas Article I, Section 2, clause 5 of the Constitution provides that the “House of Representatives...shall have the sole Power of Impeachment;” and,
Whereas Article VI of the Constitution provides that Representatives “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution....;”
Therefore, I pledge that as a Member of the United States House of Representatives, I will introduce and support an article of impeachment against any President who commences war against either a state or non-state actor without a declaration of war duly enacted by Congress. The impeachment article shall provide:
“In his/her conduct of the office of President of the United States, [name of President], in violation of his/her constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States, and to the best of his/her ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his/her constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, on and subsequent to [date] commenced war against [name of state or non-state actor attacked] in derogation of the power of Congress to declare war, to make appropriations, and to raise and support armies, and by such conduct warrants impeachment and trial and removal from office.”

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Original: Huffington Post

Bruce Fein
Constitutional Lawyer and Author

War is the greatest scourge of mankind. Unsentimental Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman remarked: “I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”
 
War not only kills and maims on an industrial scale, it also destroys liberty by creating an Executive Leviathan. James Madison presciently taught:
 
“War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
 
Hence it has grown into an axiom that the executive is the department of power most distinguished by its propensity to war: hence it is the practice of all states, in proportion as they are free, to disarm this propensity of its influence.”
 
Since war is hell, the United States Constitution champions peace except in self-defense. It does so by exclusively entrusting Congress with decisions to cross the Rubicon from peace to war. Thus, Article I, section 8, clause 11 gives Congress power “to declare war.” Its authors knew the congressional personality would be highly risk-averse or timid, which would deter declarations except in cases of actual or perceived aggression against the United States itself. James Wilson, delegate to the constitutional convention and future Justice of the Supreme Court, elaborated to the Pennsylvania ratification convention:
 
“This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress, for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large;—this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives....[which is elected every two years by the people]”
 
The Constitution prohibits congressional evasion of its responsibility for war and peace by delegation to the Executive Branch. It would condemn a statute authorizing the President to initiate war whenever the White House believes the public interest requires it. The Constitution’s separation of powers is intended to safeguard liberty irrespective of the willingness of one branch to surrender its powers to another. Chief Justice John Roberts explained in Wellness Int’l Network Ltd v. Sharif (dissenting): “[W]e have emphasized that the values of liberty and accountability protected by the separation of powers belong not to any branch of the Government but to the Nation as a whole. A branch’s consent to a diminution of its constitutional powers therefore does not mitigate the harm or cure the wrong.”
 
More than 225 years of experience under the Constitution have vindicated its expectation that Congress will declare war only in self-defense. Congress has done so on but five (5) occasions, and each was a response to actual or perceived aggression against the United States itself.
 
1.      War of 1812. Congress declared war against Great Britain after receiving a war message from President James Madison. It asserted, among other things, that the British had committed acts of war against the United States; had kidnapped thousands of American sailors from American flagged ships sailing on the high seas in violation of international law; had plundered neutral American merchant ships; had spilt the blood of American citizens within our territorial jurisdiction; and, had provoked Native American Indian savagery against American civilians.
 
2.      1846-48 Mexican-American War. Congress declared war against Mexico after receiving a war message from President James K. Polk claiming that the Mexican military had declared war against the United States, had killed or wounded 16 American soldiers on American soil, and had taken scores of others prisoner. (In fact, American soldiers had not been killed on American soil, but Congress acted on the assumption that they had).
 
3.      1898 Spanish-American War. Congress declared war on Spain after receiving a war message from President William McKinley claiming that hostilities between Spain and Cuba were causing American deaths and the destruction of American property. The President also insinuated that Spain was responsible for the explosion of the Maine in Havana harbor and the consequent deaths of hundreds of American sailors and marines. He amplified:
 
“The destruction of that noble vessel has filled the national heart with inexpressible horror. Two hundred and fifty-eight brave sailors and marines and two officers of our Navy, reposing in the fancied security of a friendly harbor, have been hurled to death, grief and want brought to their homes, and sorrow to the nation.
 
The Naval Court of Inquiry, which, it is needless to say, commands the unqualified confidence of the government, was unanimous in its conclusion that the destruction of the Maine was caused by an exterior explosion, that of a submarine mine. It did not assume to place the responsibility. That remains to be fixed.
 
In any event, the destruction of the Maine, by whatever exterior cause, is a patent and impressive proof of a state of things in Cuba that is intolerable. That condition is thus shown to be such that the Spanish government cannot assure safety and security to a vessel of the American Navy in the harbor of Havana on a mission of peace, and rightfully there. . . .”
 
4.      World War I. Congress declared war against Germany after receiving a war message from President Woodrow Wilson asserting that Germany had made war on the United States, and that “American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply.” He maintained that Germany had put us in a state of war, and was asking Congress to act defensively:
 
“I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.”
 
5.      World War II. Congress declared war against Japan after receiving a war message from President Franklin D. Roosevelt advising that a state of war existed because of Japanese naval and air attacks against the United States.
 
Since World War II, no President has asked Congress for a declaration of war. The White House either initiates wars on its own, or asks Congress to authorize the President to decide whether and when to go to war through unconstitutional delegations of the war power.
 
Presidents have done so because they know Congress will not declare war against any foreign country or non-state actor except in response to war already commenced against the United States itself. None of our multiple wars since World War II has been in self-defense, and none has been declared by Congress, for example, Korea, Libya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The 9/11 abominations were not acts of war by a non-state actor, but industrial scale murder. Accordingly, the 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, was tried and convicted in a federal court of, among other things, conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism and conspiracy to murder. He was not accused of war crimes. The 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) declines to characterize the 9/11 crimes as a war of aggression against the United States. The text references “treacherous violence” and “grave acts of violence.”
 
Our multi-trillion dollar warfare state can be ended by following rather than flouting the Constitution’s allocation of war powers. We need presidential candidates who will sign “no presidential war” pledges, congressional candidates who will pledge to impeach a president for initiating presidential wars, and voters who will boycott presidential and congressional candidates who refuse to make these respective pledges. There are no better ways to avoid the scourge of war.

Follow Bruce Fein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brucefeinesq

Original: Huffington Post