Constitutional process of declaring war must remain

The following editorial appears on Bloomberg Opinion:

Americans might differ over the finer points of the Founding Fathers’ plan to share war-making authority between the executive and legislative branches, but the basic principle has always been clear. Congress, and only Congress, has the power to declare war; the president and his military advisers are responsible for waging it.

Lawmakers’ latest attempt to restate their constitutional prerogative has those aims backward.

Since the start of this century, three consecutive presidents expanded the war against terrorism well beyond its original purposes – yet Congress repeatedly failed to update or set aside the measures it passed in 2001 and 2002 authorizing the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Lawmakers back then had no inkling of the future rise of Islamic State, the Syrian civil war, or the spread of Islamic extremism in northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Those initial authorizations have been stretched beyond the bounds of plausibility.

Now a couple of Senate heavy hitters – the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, and former Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine – have put together an authorization bill supplanting the previous two. Unlike previous proposals, it has a chance of actually getting to a floor vote.

On the biggest issue – providing legal footing for the expanded war – the proposal does fairly well. It would explicitly add Islamic State to the list of targeted parties, alongside the Taliban and al-Qaida. It would also give the president authority to take the battle to five named “associated forces,” including al-Qaida offshoots in Syria and Yemen, and to further broaden the mission as new groups appear in new battlefields. Before any such broadening, the White House would have to give Congress a detailed rationale.

All of that is sound. In other ways, the measure is disappointing.

Though it repeals the two earlier authorizations, the bill confusingly adds that it provides “uninterrupted authority” for the use of force authorized in 2001. It’s hard to say what this means, but some fear it might give the president a back-door way to undertake missions not clearly authorized under the new bill.