[Salon] Who decides when we go to war? Here’s what the framers said.

Contrary to George F. Will’s argument in his March 8 op-ed, “Presidents make war, not Congress,” the Constitution entrusts exclusively to Congress in Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, the responsibility for taking the nation to war, leaving the president with power to respond to sudden attacks that have already broken the peace.

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, said: “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. … 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.”

President George Washington said: “The Constitution vests the power of declaring War with Congress, therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject, and authorised such a measure.”

James Wilson, a Constitutional Convention delegate, said: “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.”

Unanimity among the Constitution’s glitterati thunders like a hammer on an anvil.

Bruce Fein, WashingtonFollow

The writer was associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan.

At the Constitutional Convention, the framers changed the language of Congress’s war powers in Article I from “make war” to “declare war” to protect presidential prerogative in military affairs.

As commander in chief, the president runs the military that Congress regulates and funds. The change to “declare war” permits the president to act unilaterally in defense of the country. However, if the Constitution is being followed, the president cannot start a war by himself.

Both Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln show the way. Jefferson used military force without congressional authorization to repel the Barbary pirates assaulting American merchant ships at sea. Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus at the beginning of the Civil War. Both Jefferson and Lincoln went to Congress to ask for retroactive authorization of their conduct. That is the model for unilateral presidential military action: It must be in defense of a sudden attack on America, and the president must go to Congress to ask for retroactive permission.

The idea that the framers of the Constitution wanted the president to move the country from a state of peace to a state of war without congressional authorization is not supported by reference to an original understanding of the Constitution.

Kenneth Michael White, Kennesaw, Georgia

The writer is a political scientist and criminal justice professor at Kennesaw State University.

I was drawn to one apparently authoritative statement in George F. Will’s March 8 op-ed: “There is only one large and clear example of Congress asserting primacy: It wielded its power of the purse to end what remained, in 1975, of U.S. participation in Vietnam.”

Congress has not been shy about limiting military actions initiated by the executive branch. In addition to going toe-to-toe with the Nixon administration over the Vietnam War, Congress blocked funding to the Contras, forced a timetable for the U.S. to leave Lebanon after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and required U.S. withdrawal from Somalia.

However, sometimes it is in dissent that the clearest voices of sanity can be heard. Who can forget Rep. Barbara Lee’s singular, heroic vote against U.S. military action in Afghanistan? Oversight from Congress helps our armed forces to be their best in a moral sense, as well as in a tactical and strategic sense. And for that we should all be grateful.

Stuart Gallant, Belmont, Massachusetts