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Article: War Powers: a new chapter continuing debate. (Looking at the Law).
- Article from:
- Social Education
- Article date:
- April 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 National Council for the Social Studies. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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BECAUSE the Constitution gives Congress--and not the president--the power "to declare war," public debate arises every time the president leads the nation into war without bothering to seek such a declaration.
That leads to a lot of debates, because Congress has formally declared war in only five conflicts (the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II) while U.S. presidents have committed armed forces to more than one hundred combat operations around the world in addition to full-fledged, undeclared wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and the former Yugoslavia.
For the past thirty years, the so-called ...