Almost a century and a half ago one Union soldier called the war he was in an old man's war but a young man's fight. His description still rings true today. Old men and women in the government decide when to invest young lives in a cause. Old men in sharply pressed fatigues send young lives into harms way and then stand bravely before the cameras to take the glory of victory or spin out excuses for defeat. Old men posture while young lives bleed. That is the nature of war.

A free people do not invest young lives lightly. A free people only go to war when it reaches a broad consensus that the cause justifies the investment of lives. Before we won our freedom from the British monarchy the decision of war or peace rested solely in the king. When the representatives of the states met that hot summer of 1787 they had been tempered by long years of war and they understood it well. They understood that the responsibility for the conduct of any war must rest in just one place. They understood that war couldn't be conducted by committee. They made the President, the one representative of all the people, the Commander in Chief. The responsibility of command was his and he was accountable for it to the people. But they did not trust the President with the decision to make war. It was a decision that was to be broadly shared because the consequences of going to war would be shared among all of the people. The power to declare war was delegated to the Congress as the direct representatives of the people.

In the half-century since America's last declared war ended American young people have been sent around the globe to shed their blood and expend their lives in causes great and small. From Korea to Bosnia, from Vietnam to Grenada, from Lebanon to Panama to Somalia and Kuwait we have left lives behind and no Congress has declared a war. Today we are deployed in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Yemen, Columbia and the Philippines yet no Congress has declared a war.

Each Administration since Franklin Roosevelt's has chipped away while the Congress abdicated its war-making prerogative. Each President has found in his authority to command the armed services the power to initiate armed conflict in the name of the United States. Without the restraint imposed by the necessity of receiving a Congressional authorization in advance we have expended lives around the world and on every continent. We are engaged in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America and we are deploying troops on the Canadian boarder to enforce domestic laws. And, to a degree not seen in this Country since Richard Nixon occupied the White House, unquestioning support for an undeclared war has been made a partisan test of patriotism.

The result is war by half measures. The Country and its resources have not been mobilized to the task of defeating an enemy. Except for those few families whose sons and daughters have left their lives in foreign dust no Americans have born the sacrifice of war. Indeed we are urged not to sacrifice, not to economize, and not to permit the inconvenience of a war to deter us from consuming as much as we can. We are told not to be afraid but to justify the erosion of our freedoms and invasion of our liberty to protect us from the fear of terrorism.

The duty of a patriot is to be vigilant in protecting our common liberty and safeguarding our freedoms whether those cornerstones of out democratic system comes from without or from the insidious creeping erosion of a monarchical executive. What is at stake as we enter to 2002 election season is the essence of America itself

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