Source: FFF.org
An article posted yesterday on the website Responsible Statecraft states “According to a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, only 41% of Americans support the idea of U.S. troops defending Israel, even if its neighbors attacked it.”
If that statement were made in a U.S. District Court, one of the federal attorneys would undoubtedly stand up and object by declaring, “Irrelevant and immaterial, your honor!” There is no doubt that the presiding judge would sustain the objection. It doesn’t matter one iota what the American people think about whether the nation should go to war. The determiner of that issue is the national-security establishment — namely, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. When it comes to war and foreign interventions, they are the ones in charge.
Of course, it wasn’t meant to be that way when the nation was founded. The last thing the Framers and the American people wanted was a governmental system in which either the president or the military made the decision on whether the nation was going to war. That’s why they included the declaration-of-war provision in the Constitution.
The declaration-of war provision states that it is Congress — i.e., the elected representatives of the people within the Senate and the House of Representatives — that wields the power of deciding whether the nation will go to war. Thus, while the Constitution vested the power to wage war within the executive branch, it vested the power to declare war within the legislative branch — that is, within Congress. Without a congressional declaration of war, it is, therefore, illegal under our form of government for the president or the military to wage war….