President Obama’s surprise eleventh-hour announcement that he would seek congressional approval “ere yet” starting down the road to Damascus in Syria shows he has decided to go by the rule book. The Constitution is plain: Congress has the power to declare war. At the same time, one wonders if, while walking alone across the White House lawn at 3 a.m., he did not turn over in his mind a 2013 version of Rudyard Kipling’s 1896 poem, “Hymn Before Action:”
The earth is full of anger, The seas are dark with wrath, The Nations in their harness Go up against our path: Ere yet we loose the missiles – Ere yet we draw the death drone blade, Jehovah of the Thunders, Lord God of Battles, aid!
Don Woodard, Fort Worth