Editorial: War and power

Saturday, March 3, 2007 | 7:09 a.m.

A newly formed bipartisan commission headed by former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher has begun research into one of the most important but unresolved questions of our time: How does the Constitution allocate the powers of beginning, conducting and ending war?

The privately funded commission was formed by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Since 1975, the year of its founding, the center has formed nine other such commissions, including one in 2001 headed by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. That commission recommended reforms in the wake of the disputed 2000 presidential election, and many of its recommendations were incorporated into the 2002 Help America Vote Act.

This latest Miller Center commission is undertaking an assignment that in our view is of urgent concern. Since the time of President Harry Truman and the Korean War, the power given to Congress by the Constitution to "declare" war as a precursor to committing troops to battle has become quaint.

Amid legal arguments over what the framers meant by the word "declare," and arguments by presidents that as commander in chief of the armed forces they have the constitutional authority to deploy troops on their own authority, formal declarations of war have not been made since World War II.

In an attempt to resolve the issue, which has never been fully addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress in 1973 passed the War Powers Resolution. This required the president to either get a formal declaration of war from Congress or a resolution authorizing use of force.

But as the Miller Center says of the resolution, "Both Congresses and presidents often have ignored its substance and questioned its constitutionality for the past three decades."

The importance of addressing this question can be seen today. President Bush, who obtained a resolution from Congress authorizing war on Iraq, is now escalating the war at a time when a majority of Americans (as demonstrated by November's elections) and a majority in Congress want to begin drawing down our forces there.

"Few matters are more important to our nation than how we make decisions of war and peace," said Gerald Baliles, former Virginia governor and now director of the Miller Center .

We agree, particularly in light of Bush's conduct of the war on terror. Congress has been largely an afterthought as he has ordered domestic spying, altered the intention of congressional bills by adding signing statements, authorized secret prisons in Europe, given his blessings to violating the Geneva Conventions ban on torture and (until reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court) denied legal rights to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

A national debate is long overdue on the growing powers of the presidency during wartime, and we hope this commission's report, when released, will help spark it.