Pearl Harbor

It's Monday again. For those of you in Miami and who ventured out into the dizzying array of art fairs surrounding Art Basel, I imagine that you are as tired as I am. For those of you who are not in Miami, I don't know what your excuse is.

Today is the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack, of course, marks America's official entry into World War II and an astounding loss of life brought about by terrible miscommunication (American intelligence believed an attack was imminent but that the attack would be at another base) and a failure to appreciate the full expanse of the Japanese ambition to control the Pacific.

Since then, the U.S. has been involved in other conflicts. Some were called "wars" and some we have made great effort to avoid calling "wars." For those of you who remember America's first foray into Iraq in 1990, much was made of the fact that there was no formal declaration of war by Congress and that many accused President Bush the Elder of acting outside the bounds of his constitutional authority by committing troops to combat on the other side of the world without approval of the legislature.

Since, then, we've called our actions in Iraq a "police action" (a term borrowed from Vietnam), an intervention and a peace-keeping mission. At the time, the word "war" was assiduously avoided. Why? Because under the Constitution, only Congress has the actual authority and ability to declare war. The Constitution's framers sought to avoid allowing the Executive Branch to act like the European monarchs of old who bankrupted their countries by unilaterally deciding to commit their kingdoms war. The framers believed that such decisions were properly placed in the hands of those who would actually have to fight such wars.

The Constitution does, however, make the President the Commander In Chief of the armed forces. Provided he/she has sufficient manpower, the President can still order the troops he has command over to act and can do so without consulting Congress. It's become an interesting development. Two hundred years ago, mounting an army to fight a war required a much different effort than it does today. Today, we have a standing army at the ready and, unlike a few hundred years ago, the President can deploy many of the armed forces' members around the world on a few hours' notice. It used to take a month to cross the Atlantic. I wonder what the framers would have done had they known we would one day have the ability to move half a million personnel around the world in two weeks.

So, although today is a day that will live in infamy, we Americans can attest to the fact that those who perished at Pearl Harbor did so in defense of a Constitution that still binds and guides us all.