The Constitution Of The United States - 2400 Words

One of the primary purposes of the Constitution of the United States is to divide powers between the Congress and the President. The President of course is the Commander in Chief of all the armed forces. Congress on the other hand is empowered by the Constitution to raise and support armies, to establish a navy, to declare war, to control war through things called letters of marque, and letter of reprisal, and to call forth a militia, the National Guard. So the Constitution envisions a balancing and a complementary relationship between the President and Congress when talking about war powers. But we have also got to recognize that historically when your dealing with times of war and great crisis affecting the United States, the†¦show more content†¦However, we are told by the President that this war on terrorism is a global war, the battlefield extends anywhere in the world including within the United States. And this is a war that may not have any end-point because if it extends to when the last terrorist cell that could possibly do us harm is eradicated, it will go on and on, and the Presidents power will continue to accrue, unless Congress challenges it. Four different applications of Presidential power in the war on terrorism. 1. The detention and prosecution of enemy combatants, such as those we hold in Guantanamo Bay. 2. Interrogation techniques and torture. 3. Extraordinary rendition, when the Germans basically began subpoenaing some of our CIA agents. 4. Surveillance by the National Security Agency. Detention of enemy combatants, there is a rich history in international law to support that. Commanders have always had the authority to detain those that they capture on the battlefield until the cessation of hostilities, this is established in the Hague regulations of 1907, and the much more familiar Geneva Conventions of 1949. So when the President says that he can detain enemy combatants until the end of the war this is a true statement, the question is when will the war be over. Because in World War II we knew when the war was over, in the first