The Powers of War

by M. Richard Maxson                                                              

     The president of the United States is also known as the Commander and Chief of the Army and Navy and has the powers to:
- Declare war, grant letters of marks and reprisal
- Call forth the Militia
- Provide and maintain a Navy
- Define and punish offenses against the law of nations
 - Raise and support armies
- Make rules for the government and regulation of [the armed forces]
- Make rules for captures on land and sea
- Define and punish piracies and felonies on the high seas
- Organize, arm and discipline the militia
- Exercise authority over building of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings.

    If you agree with the above then you are compeltly WRONG. These are the powers given to the Congress, but most Americans, believing many powers assigned to Congress belong to the president.  The Framers gave only the Congress the authority – and duty – to make such decisions. James Madison observed, “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.”

    Recent Presidents have advanced an interpretation of Art. II that gives the “commander in chief” power over any and all issues that can be tied to the defense of the nation. In these arguments, so many actions are defined as under the president’s  limit of authority that the executive branch becomes an unlimited and unstoppable force. However, this misunderstanding about whether the constitution could be amended through the making of treaties was denied in the case of Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957):  "This court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the constitution over a treaty" [Reid, at p. 17]. "No agreement with a foreign nation (no executive orders, no Presidential directives, no "accords" etc.) can confer power on Congress or any other branch of government, which is free from the restraints of the constitution" [Reid, supra].

      The current perversion of the Constitution is a lethal attack on our core value of divided government.  Constitutional powers are not subject to be “taken” from one branch by another. However Congress and the public now seem satisfied to let the president exercise this pilfered authority. The Framers intended that decisions regarding the use of military force were to be safely in the hands of Congress while the execution of those decisions were to be solely presidential. Today's Democratic Socialists have no regard for the Constitution or rule of law and have severely weakened it in many places, and as a result, our liberty, our prosperity and our very nation are in decline and in grave jeopardy.