Congress has been shirking its constitutional duty to declare war before U.S. force is used for more than two decades.
And Thursday's symbolic House vote against President Donald Trump's Iran policy was no remedy. It was merely a continuation of Congress's pattern of ducking its responsibility, having done nothing about past usurpation of its authority by Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
For many in the House, the vote was no doubt about Mr. Trump and the fatal drone strike he ordered against Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
The principle at stake is so much greater, as evidenced by support for a similar resolution by Sen. Mike Lee, a conservative Utah Republican who believes the killing of Soleimani was justified.
After being briefed Wednesday by the Trump administration on that attack, Mr. Lee stood up for the Constitution.
Serving as the conscience of the Senate on the matter, Mr. Lee said he was offended by administration officials' dismissal of the Senate's constitutional role in U.S. military action.
"They were in the process of telling us that we need to be good little boys and girls and not debate this in public," Mr. Lee said. "I find that absolutely insane. It's un-American, it's unconstitutional and it's wrong."
The only way to set things right is for the House and Senate to demand that any president contemplating an act of war first ask Congress to declare one. That's the bill the Senate should send back to the House.
The history of past delegations of authority by Congress on its authority over war powers is both long and consistent.
In 2002, Congress passed a broad authorization to use military force under which U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan and Iraq. The same resolution was used by then-President Obama to send troops into Syria in September 2015, and by Mr. Trump to justify the recent attack that killed the Iranian general.
In 1999, after a resolution to support U.S. airstrikes against Yugoslavia failed on a tie vote, Congress approved funding to support Mr. Clinton's decision to engage our military in the NATO-led action in Bosnia-Herzegovena.
As if to emphasize its desire to avoid responsibility for U.S. military action in the Middle East, Congress declined Mr. Obama's call in 2013 and again in 2015 for an authorization to use force in Syria.
Congress owed the nation a vote on Mr. Obama's request. If they didn't like his plan, as many Republicans said at the time, they should have taken up a declaration of war over Syria's use of chemical weapons and voted it down.
The same holds today. Congress should require the president to justify further military action against Iran, debate the full ramifications of doing so and declare war if and only if the case has been made.
