When I visit Arlington National Cemetery, I visit my only brother, Jerry. My friends Tony and Jeremy rest nearby. Tony was killed in Iraq in 2005, leading an Army Special Forces Operational Detachment, leaving behind his wife and four children. Jeremy was killed that same year on his third tour in Afghanistan, leaving behind a widow and his parents. My brother died while serving his country in 2008, leaving four boys without their father. When politicians talk about military options, authorizations, and war powers, these are the people I think about.
Twenty-five years ago, America was attacked. Nearly 3,000 people were murdered on Sept. 11. In the days that followed, Americans came together in a way that is difficult to imagine today. We displayed flags, donated money, and thanked service members in airports. We told ourselves we were all in this together.
As the wars continued, the burden wasn’t shared equally. A Pew Research Center study conducted a decade after 9/11 found that only about one-half of 1% of Americans had been on active military duty at any given time during those years of warfare. Eighty-three percent said military personnel and their families had sacrificed a lot. Only 43% said the same about the public. Half said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had made little difference in their own lives.
I don’t resent people who didn’t serve. We have an all-volunteer military. But that growing distance has consequences. When so few people personally experience war, it becomes easier for Washington to send someone else to fight one.
Military service runs through generations of my family, from my great-grandfather in World War I to my nephew in Iraq. I am proud of that history. I also wonder why fighting America’s conflicts has increasingly become the responsibility of families already familiar with the cost of war.
The space between Americans and the wars fought in their name concerns me for another reason. Over the past 25 years, Congress has surrendered too much of its responsibility for deciding when America goes to war. The Constitution divides responsibility for war. The president is commander in chief, and Congress has the power to declare war, fund the military, and provide oversight. The division is intentional. Neither branch was meant to make these decisions alone.
President Dwight Eisenhower, a former five-star general, put it plainly in 1956: “I am not going to order any troops into anything that can be interpreted as war, until Congress directs it.”
Days after Sept. 11, Congress passed the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force against those responsible for the attacks. Over the years, that authority was interpreted to support military operations far beyond Afghanistan and against forces that did not exist when America was attacked.
Presidents of both parties have accumulated greater freedom to use military force. Congresses controlled by both parties have complained about executive overreach while avoiding the responsibility that comes with voting for or against war. It’s a convenient arrangement for Washington. Presidents get flexibility. Members of Congress get deniability. The people ordered to carry out the mission get neither.
When I served in combat, I didn’t get to decide whether the policy was wise. Deciding when people should fight belongs to our elected leaders.
This isn’t an argument against military force. There are times when America must fight. When we do, the people making that decision should be accountable for it. If service members are ordered into sustained hostilities, Congress should debate the mission, define its purpose, and vote. Authorizations shouldn’t become blank checks inherited by presidents decades later.
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On Friday, we will once again read the names of those murdered 25 years ago. We should. Remembrance should also include the people who answered the call in the years that followed.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, Congress can honor those who carried the cost of America’s wars by reclaiming its constitutional authority.The 119th Congress should mark this anniversary by advancing the bipartisan H.R. 6751 to repeal the 2001 AUMF and use that opportunity to establish a narrower, time-bound framework for future military action. Before sending another generation to fight, debate the mission and put it to a vote. The people asked to fight shouldn’t be the only ones required to own the repercussions.
Scott W. Patton is a combat veteran and Gold Star family member whose work has appeared in USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the Plain Dealer, the Washington Examiner, and other national outlets.