December 7, 1941 is remembered as a “day that will live in infamy.” On that day Japanese air forces assaulted the US naval station at Pearl Harbor. The next day Congress declared war on the empire of Japan. Japan’s ally, Germany, declared war on the United States soon after and on December 11th the United States declared war on Germany.
That was the last time the United States went to war. We haven’t gone to war in more than 75 years. Now, you likely know enough history to know that less than a decade after the end of World War II American soldiers were sent to fight and die in Korea. Little more than a decade after that it was Viet Nam where American men were ordered to go and fight and die. Since that time, over the course of the last 45 years, American servicemen have fought and killed and died in Nicaragua, Bosnia, Somalia, Panama, Grenada, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan. That’s off the top of my head, with no help from google.
How is it possible for American soldiers to travel to foreign countries, drop ordinance on the citizens of those countries, while being shot at, wounded and killed by those citizens when we haven’t been to war? Because long before this election the Constitution has been little more than a dead letter, a bit of romantic poetry that soldiers swear to uphold while their bosses ignore it as they send them to their deaths.
I am not a pacifist. I do agree with the wisdom the church has provided on just war theory. But my point here is neither about war nor the justness of any of these non-wars. A case could be made for the legitimacy of American military involvement in every one of these conflicts. What is indisputable is that such a case, according to what is supposed to be the highest law of the land, is a case for declaring war, not a case for fighting an undeclared war.
Next up, the War Powers Act. This bit of legislative legerdemain purportedly authorizes the president to, in his office as commander-in-chief, wage war for a limited time without explicit Congressional approval. So, some argue, your point, Sproul, is off point. Every one of those conflicts comes under the War Powers Act, or a United Nations approved plan. Except, of course, that the War Powers Act is not an amendment to the Constitution. It’s simply an unconstitutional bit of propaganda. It’s as if the feds came and seized every privately held gun and when we cry that our 2nd amendment rights have been trampled upon we hear in response, “Oh, but this is pursuant to the Gun Seizing Powers Act. It has nothing to do with the 2nd Amendment.”
As I have argued before, this kind of wicked folly is not new. The sky isn’t falling, not because everything is copacetic. No, it’s because the sky fell a long time ago. Expecting either party to submit to the plain meaning of the Constitution was killed in action with our first shot fired in Korea.