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A history refresher: The framers of the U.S. Constitution decided 230 years ago to divide the nation’s war powers between the president and the Congress, making the president the commander in chief of the armed forces and giving the lawmakers the exclusive power to declare war.
Yet, as 2018 gets underway, the executive branch continues a multiyear military campaign against ISIS, even though the Congress has not exercised its power to declare war against that target.
We asked Bob Eatinger, former CIA Senior Deputy General Counsel, to break down how the U.S. declares war — from James Madison’s notes of the debates during the 1787 Constitutional Convention, to how the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed to hunt al Qaeda after 9/11 is used to hunt ISIS now:
- "Today, the Congress exercises its power to declare war through a process established by the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Under that congressional resolution, the executive must submit a report to the Congress for any case in which U.S. armed forces “are introduced into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances,” and to “terminate any use of United States Armed Forces with respect to which such report was submitted (or required to be submitted), unless the Congress … has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces.”
- "The last declared war was World War II. Since then, the Congress has “declared war” through legislation called an authorization to use military force, or AUMF. Yet currently, the executive makes war against ISIS even though the Congress has not declared war against ISIS."
Read Eatinger's analysis of AUMFs and congressional war powers. |
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