Essay: The Case for War

So Congress wants to reassert its constitutional prerogative to decide whether or not the nation should go to war. About time. U.S. Presidents have gone much too far toward claiming (or rather exercising without even bothering to claim) the power of Louis XIV to send a whole nation into battle on his sole judgment, even whim. The makers of the Constitution were determined never to give one man that power in the new republic, and they were right. If the U.S. is to fight Iraq, it should be by conscious decision of its elected representatives, reached after full debate.

But that...

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