Going to war: who decides? The debate between President Bush and Congress over the conduct of the Iraq war is the latest in a long line of disputes over war powers.

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: NATIONAL

In January, a few days after President Bush announced his plan to send another 20,000 troops to Iraq, he made it clear that he believed the decision was his alone to make as Commander in Chief of the military. "I made my decision, and we're going forward," he said in a television interview. But in Congress, where there is considerable opposition to the war in Iraq and to the President's plan for a troop "surge," some lawmakers say the President's authority to make war is far from absolute.

"I suggest we are coequal--Congress, along with the President--in deciding when, if, how long, and under what circumstances to send Americans to war," said Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, who opposes the President's plan.

The question of who can send American troops to war--the President or Congress--has been debated in Washington for more than 200 years. The Constitution divides war powers between the executive and legislative branches, but the language is open to interpretation.

The Constitution says: "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." (There was no Air Force or Coast Guard in 1789, and the Marine Corps was, and is, technically part of the Navy.) Today, the heads of all five branches of the military ultimately take their orders from the President.

But the Constitution also says: "The Congress shall have power ... to declare war" and to "provide for the common defense ... of the United States." And since Congress also controls federal spending--what's known as "the power of the purse"--it has the authority to decide whether to fund a war.

At the very least, the Founding Fathers seem to have wanted Congress to have some say in matters of war. "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department," James Madison wrote in 1793.

FIVE FORMAL DECLARATIONS

Congress has formally declared war only five times (see timeline, p. 10), but Presidents have sent troops to fight abroad more than 200 times, including various interventions in Central America, the war in Vietnam, and the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Usually, there has been some kind of congressional assent beforehand, but not always.

"From Washington forward, Presidents have engaged in military activities without declarations and without authorizations," says Matthew Spaulding of the Heritage Foundation.

But since the Vietnam War, which lasted more than a decade and divided the nation, the issue of presidential vs. congressional authority in wartime has come up many times. In the late 1960s, as the number of Americans killed in Vietnam rose (eventually reaching 58,000), there was increasing pressure to end the war. Congress responded in 1970 by barring the use of any funds for troops in neighboring Cambodia, to which the war had spread. And in 1973, after President Richard M. Nixon agreed to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam, Congress set a date after which no funds could be used to support combat in Southeast Asia.

WAR POWERS ACT

Congress went a step further that year by passing the War Powers Act, which requires a President to terminate the use of force after 90 days unless Congress has authorized it. The act became...