In 1787 one of the issues that vexed the men charged with creating a new nation was the power to make war. It had been a matter that had vexed the Mother Country for centuries. Who made the decision to go to war? Who decided how to pay for war? The sovereign had the decision to make war and, the decision having been made, Parliament decided how to pay for it. There were those delegations who would have vested the sovereign power to go to war in the President. But in this new nation sovereignty rested in the people not an elected monarch. The power to declare war was vested in those who were charged with providing for its cost - the people's representatives in Congress.

The people's representatives were charged with the Constitutional duty to determine when there was sufficient cause to commit the treasure of the nation and the very lives of its citizens to the destruction of the treasure and lives of another nation. Since 1941 the Congress has been cowed by that awesome responsibility and has attempted to circumvent its Constitutional duty to make that determination. In Korea and Vietnam and the Persian Gulf it authorized something short of war. It has passed the so-called War Powers Act to delegate the authority to initiate war the Executive Branch. It authorized the initiation of armed conflict with Iraq by resolution to permit the President to make war without declaring war.

In each of those instances the causa belli was clear. One national power had invaded the sovereign territory of another. (Leaving aside the question of whether or not there had been an armed attack on the forces of the United States in the Tonkin Gulf.) Now we are told that we are poised to invade the sovereign territory of another nation - not to repel an invader, but to oust that nation's government not as a result of that which it has done, but as a result of that which the Executive claims to fear that it might do.

Now the Secretary of War (to give Mr. Rumsfeld his historical and more semantically correct title) tells us that we must make war on Saddam Hussein because he might have biological weapons; he might have chemical weapons and he hungers after the power of nuclear weapons. How do we know this? According to the Secretary, he has hidden them; we can't find them; thus he must have them. For that reason we must go to war.

Perhaps it is in America's interest to prosecute its first war of aggression since 1898. I don't know. I am not privy to the information. But I do know that if America must launch an apparently unprovoked invasion, it is a question for the Congress and not the Executive to decide. It is their Constitutional responsibility. It is the President's Constitutional duty to present his case for the national commitment to the Congress. In this case the buck stops in the Capitol and not the White House.