I expressed myself poorly. I meant to say that only Congress had the power to initiate hostilities, but of course "make war" was the wrong choice of words because it can mean both initiating the hostilities and conducting them. Better to stick with the original wording, which to me is clear enough. As you point out, it is the power to DECLARE war. There's also in the same sentence a power to issue letters of reprisal, which is the authorization of forceful actions falling short of war to retaliate for some wrong done to the nation.
I don't see any problems in understanding that power, Pooch. To declare war is to formally commit the nation to war on another nation. Either after being attacked (as in reaction to Pearl Harbor) or before being attacked (as in Nazi Germany's declaration of war on the U.S.A.) That power was exclusively given to Congress and IMHO for very good reason - - the U.S. had fought through a bloody revolution to free itself from a monarchy and establish a relatively new form of government, a Republic. They were hoping to escape from the accidents of one-man rule and wanted decisions as important as war to be taken out of the hands of a single ruler and placed in the hands of the people, through their elected representatives. So it was important, if the nation were to be committed to so deadly an undertaking, that it be done only after a full and fair debate where all sides of the issue were likely to be subjected to the testing of adversarial debate. That's why, even in the face of an intolerable attack, FDR still went to the Congress to ask for a declaration of war. He did not dare usurp the power that the Constitution had given only to the Congress.
I think as a form of verbal shorthand here, I am going to use the term "war-making power" to mean the power to declare war or otherwise initiate wars. Not the power to wage a war once begun.
IMHO, the concern of the Framers with the war-making power was, like the colonists' concern with the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts, generated by the threat of financial exactions and stemmed from the days of the English Civil War in the 17th Century, when the King's unilateral power to plunge the country into foreign wars inevitably resulted in exorbitant financial demands on the merchants and traders who were expected to pay for the royal adventures but received no share in any of the foreign dominions thereby acquired. The pattern repeated under George III. There was a great and understandable resolve NOT to let the fate of the new nation be committed to one man's decision, which was a major advance in governance at the time. There were frequent references in the literature of the times to "the wars of kings," which expressed the resentment of the middle classes over the king's extravagant waste of other people's lives, limbs and treasure in wars of his own choosing.
Fast-forward to today, and you can see in the Iraq War a textbook illustration of what the Founding Fathers were afraid of. The war was not fully debated in an adversarial contest in the Congress, the members of which in effect reverted to the monarchical system which the Framers were so anxious to avoid and delegated their Constitutional responsibility to the one man that the Constitution had said should not have it. He of course, like Charles I and George III before him, unilaterally committed the nation to a war which has turned out to be a fucking disaster. This abandonment of Constitutional responsibility is a disgraceful act of cowardice and irresponsibility. It's a betrayal of the Constitution. Everyone who took part in it - - and that of course includes Kerry - - betrayed their country and their Constitution. It stands to reason that Kerry should be crucified (figuratively of course) for this.
The duty that the Congress owed to the people of the U.S. under the Constitution was to consider a proposal for war, to weigh it, to debate it, and ultimately to decide upon it and if so decided to declare war. That's how wars were traditionally commenced, up to Pearl Harbor. It was considered particularly dishonourable at the time that the Japs had attacked America without a declaration of war. I don't believe that the Framers anticipated that the U.S. would enter a war without a declaration of war and so the power to declare was to all intents and purposes the power to commit the country to a war. There was no other way. By the actions of the Congress, the people of the U.S.A. were robbed of their constitutional right to have the issue of war fully considered and debated before committment.
