Mario Cuomo Calls Out All Democratic Candidates and Congress on War

Writing on the op-ed pages of today's New York Times ("How Congress Forgot Its Own Strength" Week in Review - Sunday Oct. 7, 2007) Mario Cuomo, former NY Governor and one of the most eloquent speakers the party has ever produced, calls out the Democrats in Congress and specifically challenges the presidential candidates on their refusal to lead from strength regarding their constitutionally mandated authority to declare, or NOT to declare, war.

Senators Jim Webb of Virginia and Hillary Clinton of New York are right to demand that the president go before Congress to ask for a "declaration of war" before proceeding with an attack against Iran or any other nation.  But there is no need for this demand to be put into law, as the two Democrats and their colleagus are seeking to do, any more than there is need for legislation to guarantee our right of free speech or anything else protected by the Constitution.

Cuomo goes on to remind us that Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly grants to Congress - and Congress alone - the power to declare war, purposefully designed by the founders to negate the possibility of a president "too much like the British monarch, whom they despised." And following from that plain and simple fact, Cuomo writes:

Because the Constitution cannot be amended by persistent evasion, this mandate was neither erased nor modified by the actions or inactions of timid Congresses that allowed over eager presidents to start wars in Vietnam and elsewhere without making a declaration.

Indeed, asking for more legislation now would imply that the Constitution doesn't mean what it already says.

The next several paragraphs speak of a "repeat mistake" of 2002, the eagerness to "shed the burden" of having to make the decision, the possibility that Congressional deliberation might have "revealed" claims about WMD's and Al Qaeda to be untrue, that the proposal creates the "likelihood of another failed Congressional effort" for lack of votes and, ultimately and forcefully, he writesof of Congress's "refusal to comply" with the Constitution leading us into our current "catastrophic aftermath."

Such a tragedy should never be allowed to happen again.

And the final paragraph:

The Democrats should go still further and announce that no money will be appropriated for any miltary action against another nation without a proper declaration of war.  And this should be the position of the Democratic presidential candidates as well. How else can they make the case that they are less likely than President Bush to wage a dangerous, improvident war?(emphasis added)

[The Sunday edition is not yet on-line.  When it is, I'll update with a link]

UPDATE/LINKS:  a MILLION thank you's to The Maven and inclusiveheart for providing, below, LINKS to both the NYTimes essay (Maven) and to a SPLENDID video of Cuomo being interviewed by Chris Matthews.  SEE THEIR COMMENTS. CHECK OUT THOSE LINKS NOW!