The U.S. occupation of Afghanistan has reached its "sell-by" date. A majority of Americans now tell pollsters the mission was a mistake.

Ninety-eight members of the House - including liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans - have co-sponsored Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern's resolution asking the Pentagon to develop an exit strategy.

But the generals who run wars, and the defense contractors who profit from them, want to keep U.S. troops on the ground there. And President Obama is under pressure to surge additional U.S. troops into "the graveyard of empires."

The people have wisely turned against an occupation that has cost the United States too many lives and too much money while only making a bad situation worse for the Afghans.

Unfortunately, the people do not have the power to end wars. So it falls to Congress to demand an exit strategy.

Ramping up support for McGovern's resolution is job No. 1 in the struggle to bring the troops home and cede responsibility for Afghanistan to the people who live there - perhaps with an assist from an international entity that can offer peacekeeping and development aid.

The deeper questions raised by the Afghan imbroglio were explored over the weekend in Washington, where the "Who Decides About War?" conference on war powers, law and democracy was held at Georgetown Law School.

The conference was a project of Ben Manski and the Madison-based Liberty Tree Foundation - a think tank that actually thinks about new ways to address fundamental issues - along with the "Bring the Guard Home! It's the Law" campaign. Peace Action, Iraq Veterans Against the War and other groups backed it. The "Who Decides About War?" invitation noted, correctly: "The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have revived and deepened long-standing questions about how and by whom war and peace should be decided under our Constitution and in faith with our democratic aspirations."

Manski and his colleagues are asking core questions that are philosophical and practical about how our democracy can set in place consistent and durable criteria for considering when or if to use military force.

My favorite of the questions is this: "What can we learn from the history of the 1930s-era campaign for a War Referendum Amendment, together with the 1970s-era People Power Over War Amendment, both of which would have established a deliberative national referendum process on war?"

The answer, for those who take democracy seriously, is: "a lot."

We should recognize that in the relatively recent past there was serious debate in the United States about how the people could be brought into the process of what the founders referred to as "chaining the dogs of war."

The drafters of the Constitution intended to make it impossible for a president to lead the country into war without an explicit declaration from Congress and periodic reviews by the House and Senate.

Unfortunately, as America developed what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described as an "imperial presidency," and as commanders in chief began to use their bully pulpits and the media to promote their wars - and the endless occupations that are their byproducts - constitutional checks and balances decayed.

As long ago as 1914, when Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan and Wisconsin Sen. Robert M. La Follette were agitating to keep the U.S. out of World War I, they began to talk of creating a new check and balance that rested the power to declare most wars in the people.

La Follette's proposal to amend the Constitution to require "a popular referendum before declaring war" had platform support by 1924 from the senator's independent progressive movement and the Democratic Party. It eventually spawned a formal amendment sponsored in the 1930s by Indiana Congressman Louis Ludlow. The amendment read: "Except in the event of an invasion of the United States or its territorial possessions and attack upon its citizens residing therein, the authority of Congress to declare war shall not become effective until confirmed by a majority of all votes cast thereon in a nationwide referendum. Congress, when it deems a national crisis to exist, may by concurrent resolution refer the question of war or peace to the citizens of the states, the question to be voted on being, Shall the United States declare war on _____?"

Backed by close to 200 House members, the amendment was, according to a Gallup Poll conducted in 1936, supported by 75 percent of all Americans.

A slightly different amendment, backed by a dozen senators, would have given voters authority to declare or reject war except in exceptional circumstances. Wisconsin Sen. Robert M. La Follette Jr. told the Senate in 1939 that the amendment was needed to break the cycle where presidents "lay the groundwork for war" and then at an opportune moment ask Congress "to rubber-stamp a declaration of war."

The idea of giving the people power over war-making was renewed in the 1970s by members of Congress who wanted to prevent future Vietnams. The undeclared Iraq war has inspired dozens of local referendum and town hall meeting votes calling for immediate withdrawal.

Now Manski and his compatriots have raised the issue anew - along with Liberty Tree's wise suggestion that states be given greater authority over National Guard deployments to war zones.

America has so broken faith with its founding traditions - especially George Washington's encouragement to avoid entangling alliances - that proposals to check and balance imperial presidents now are dismissed as unrealistic. And the idea of resting the power to declare wars with the people who fight and pay for them is ridiculed.

But if America is ever going to renew its small "r" republican traditions, let alone realize its small "d" democratic potential, it is hard to imagine a better place to begin than with the question: "Who decides about war?"

John Nichols is the associate editor of The Capital Times. The author of several books on constitutional issues, he is a member of Liberty Tree's board. jnichols@madison.com

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