After the end of the Second World War it was a categorical imperative for us to declare that we renounced war forever in a central article of the new Constitution.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The Constitution is clear, Article I, Section 8, power vetted in Congress to declare war. If you go back to the founding documents of this nation, the decision of going to war was to be made by people closest to the ground - the elected officials - to make those decisions.
When I was sworn in the Marine Corps in 1964, when I was sworn into Congress, I swore to uphold the Constitution against enemies, both foreign and domestic. We have a lot of domestic enemies of - of the Constitution, those who want to pervert it, those who want to change it.
It is important to understand the continuing, confused fascination with the Second World War. For most of us, the great unspoken question is how would we have behaved in the face of danger and when forced to make major moral choices.
War is something of man's own fostering, and if all mankind renounces it, then it is no longer there.
When my elders mentioned 'The War,' they invariably meant that of 1914-1918, even after 1939, for the Second World War was merely the continuation of the first, 'an armistice of 20 years,' as Marshal Foch had accurately predicted at the Versailles Peace Conference, with some changes of side.
We came to know each other in war, and in war we continue.
To my mind, what we ought to have maintained from the beginning was the strictest neutrality. If we had done this, I do not believe we would have been on the verge of war at the present time.
American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation.
The main thing I say on war is that we need to obey the law and formally declare war.
War is America's central liturgical act necessary to renew our sense that we are a nation unlike other nations.