RESPECTING THE CONSTITUTION

A nation, like an individual, has a memory. We do not, however, call it memory but history. To borrow a phrase from Marcel Proust, history is a nation's remembrance of things past.

This week we are celebrating the Fourth of July and the publication of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Although the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would come later, they are historical and integral parts of the Fourth of July celebration. Yes, indeed, let freedom ring even though this year it does not have a strong and vibrant ring! I say that because the war in Iraq continues to mute our celebration.

I have some advice for the presidential candidates and for those who are running for Congress: Read the Constitution and the Federalist papers authored by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. Candidates for the presidency, the Senate and the House will find there some basic truths such as the following:

“The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates,” wrote Madison, “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.”

Consider also these words of Madison, the father of our Constitution: “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

The Founding Fathers accordingly gave to the president the power to wage war, but it gave to the Congress the power to declare war. The president may want to wage war against a country that he considers a threat to our nation. But he can only wage war against that country if the Congress has declared war. Not surprisingly presidents of both parties—Truman, Johnson, Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 42—eager to wage war, have tried to ignore or circumvent the provision that Congress must first declare war or have misled the Congress by withholding crucial information.

Had President George W. Bush told the truth about why he wanted to wage war on Iraq and had Congress accepted its responsibility to thoroughly discuss and debate the need to invade Iraq, our nation might have avoided this quagmire called the Iraq War.

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