Krauthammer: Congress Should Declare War on the Islamic State

BAIER: "Let me ask you about Congress. Are they going to move forward? Senator Corker says they are going to have an AUMF, authorization for military force, but the administration seems to be dragging its feet?"
LIASSON: "Well, they need an AUMF. Everybody wants one. The administration wants one. The Congress wants one. They've got to pass this thing. They're going forward without it but Congress should do its duty and pass one and work it out with the administration. Of all the things that are on Congress' plate this one should not be that difficult."
WILL: "But it really falls to presidents to say what they want to authorize force against. Roosevelt didn't go before Congress after Pearl harbor and say I want to declare war, you guys decide on whom. He said this is the day of infamy, we are going to do the following."
BAIER: "You think they don't know?"
WILL: "I'm not sure. It's a very difficult to write that authorization of military force because we don't know all places where we're going to end up fighting the Islamic State including the failed state of Libya which is a product of our own policy."
KRAUTHAMMER: "That is why I think we ought to revive and to bring back the anachronism of actually declaring war. If we say only Iraq and Syria, you are right. There is ISIS in other places, it is not allowed to go after ISIS. The idea I think is to declare war as we used to do 70 years ago and say ISIS, Islamic State, and that means against a certain entity anywhere it is. It gives you all kinds of rights as a belligerent that you wouldn't otherwise have. Why not do it that way then revive the constitutional way of doing it?"
BAIER: "Is this a turning point or not?"
KRAUTHAMMER: "It should be, I don't know if it will be."
LIASSON: "It should be."
WILL: "For the record the last time it declared war was against Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary in 1942. Many wars ago."
KRAUTHAMMER: "And we beat them."
WILL: "Yes."
BAIER: "This could go on for hours."