War-making powers outlined in the U.S. Constitution: ‘I think we should follow it’

If there is one takeaway message that William P. Ruger wanted members of The American Legion’s National Security Commission meeting to take away from his presentation, it was for Congress to get back to following the procedures our Founding Fathers outlined in the U.S. Constitution, specifically addressing the war-making powers outlined in Article 1.

Under Article I, Section 8, Congress has the power to declare war, raise and support Armies, maintain a Navy, organize and call forth a militia, and budget for war. Ruger said during his presentation Aug. 28 in Phoenix for the organization’s 102nd National Convention that the presidential war power is limited in the Constitution, with Founding Father Roger Sherman declaring the “Executive should be able to repel and not to commence war.”

“The president is to act only after Congress deliberates and declares war,” said Ruger, a U.S. Navy veteran of the Afghanistan war who was nominated by President Trump to serve as the Afghanistan ambassador and is currently the vice president for research and policy at Charles Koch Institute. “We have gotten away from this design. Congress has been unwilling to act and play its Constitutional role; much easier to let the president act then to be criticized if it goes wrong, then take credit in support of the president if it goes right.

“When the founders met over 200 years ago in Philadelphia, they did not want one person to be able to make war without any connection to the will of the people through their representatives. They wanted to divide the war powers between the Executive Branch and Congress. It was the idea that the wisdom of many was superior to wisdom of one … the idea of liberation, talking together, will actually get us to a better place than having the rule of one.

“They understood the hard work of declaring war by Congress would mean that you have to sell the words to the public. You had to talk to the people, get them to agree on what we were going to do as a country. This is important because you need to bring the public along because of the extreme sacrifice that war demands of us.”

Ruger shared about a time when “it has come to more contentious issues” and a war was “fought without Congressional authorization” – Libya. “We fought a war that was undeclared, there wasn’t much deliberation, it was never connected to the national interest …” and the “result of this is that arms flowed out to other countries, terrorist flew in, there was civil war, a huge refugee crisis to Europe.

“If we need to go to war, Congress needs to do its job, the president needs to lead us to keep us safe.”

Ruger asked the National Security Commission what should be done now to get us back to the American way is to follow the U.S. Constitution. “It’s an amazing document. We should cherish this and follow its procedures. (Our Founding Fathers) gave us a document that has allowed us to be the greatest nation in the world. I think we should follow it.”

To that end, Ruger outlined next steps for Congress to take:

- Repeal the 2001 and 2002 Authorization of Use for Military Force (AUMF). Ruger said they don’t reflect current threats and that the 2002 AUMF is “unnecessary because the target of that war” was Saddam Hussein. American Legion National Commander James W. “Bill” Oxford issued the Legion’s support for the repeal of the 2002 AUMF earlier in August. 

- Reassert its Article 1 “powers to make sure we are not engaging in presidential wars where Congress does not have a say as does the American people not have a say.”

- Address a new war powers resolution.

“If we are going to war, the president should make the case to the people and Congress have capability to stop these conflicts if they are not meeting what they authorized. Then when war is necessary, the American people are with us. They understand the sacrifice they are called to make, and they understand it has gone through a democratic process with our Constitution.”

It’s the sacrifice of war that Ruger spoke of and knows personally, as his grandfather was a World War II Battle of the Bulge prisoner of war – a topic that Kelly McKeague addressed in his presentation to the National Security Commission.

Missing in Action update

McKeague, director for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), shared that of the 81,720 missing Americans from World War II to today’s present conflicts, an estimated 38,000 can be recovered. The others are in deep water below the 300 feet limit that DPAA can recover.

“These are your comrades in arms that we dutifully search for and hope to one day find,” McKeague said. “When we send our men and women off to combat, we have a responsibility, a sacred one, to fulfill a promise made to them and their families” of bringing them home.

The 46 countries that America partners with on this effort “all recognize that this is a humanitarian effort … people understand and appreciate the responsibility that we have as a nation to search for, find, bring home, our own,” McKeague said. To that note, McKeague gave an example. When the 20 DPAA teams deployed last year had to return stateside because of COVID, Vietnam volunteered to help DPAA and conducted 10 excavations on its own. It found the remains of a U.S. naval aviator. As the lockdown into countries has been easing up, DPAA has sent 13 teams into nine countries.

McKeague shared recent successes of DPAA, including that of the 388 unknown remains from the USS Oklahoma that sunk in 1941 during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 347 have been identified. “Those 347 families now have answers,” he said. One solider identified was from Dayton, Ohio, whose 86-year-old sister was seven years old when her brother went missing. She is the only survivor out of 10 kids to hear that her brother was found and to attend his funeral beside her children, grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren. “Again, just part of this nation’s commitment to its missing and to their families,” McKeague said.  

Another success happened this past March. It was the news that the remains of Army Chaplain Emil Kapaun, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Obama in 2013, had been identified.  

Kapaun was a World War II veteran and re-enlisted for the Korean War in November 1950. The Pilsen, Kan., native was a chaplain with the 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division and was captured on Nov. 2, 1950, and taken as a prisoner. Kapaun became ill from dysentery and pneumonia in prison, yet still ministered to his fellow POWs. He died in May 1951 at 35 years old.

Kapaun’s remains were among the 867 American servicemembers from the Korean War buried as “unknowns” at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. McKeague said DPAA is in the process of disinterring all remains, and they have 500 more to identify. Kapaun’s funeral will be Sept. 29, where his remains will be interred inside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Wichita, Kan.

“It’s because of you that this issue receives a great deal of support not only in the halls of Congress, but also here at home, in your towns, where your posts are, where your departments are and more importantly, the psyche of the American public,” McKeague said.