[rubberstamp]

May be there should be a constitutional requirement to put those politicians that call for war right in the front lines along with those who actually fights it. Then may be they would have an appreciation for veterans and their care, cut back on unnecessary wars as they would think hard before putting themselves in harms way rather than war mongering sitting in the luxurious comfort.

Taking responsibility can put an end to a lot of bad things happening in todays society. Doing whatever without having to face its consequences is the root cause of such behavior that causes harm to people.

[cturner]

There's a lot of room for innovation here, and there hasn't been much precedent for this historically.

You could have constitutional measures controlling the way that wars were funded. A simple example: simple outlaw any kind of deficit spending by the national government. Another: a mechanism by which the release of funds could be tied up under legislation supervised by a third party such as the judiciary. [You could have a war chest, but encode it in a law such that the money could only be released if a senior court ruled that the release satisfied self-defense criteria.]

One of the reasons that the original United States constitution (Articles of Confederation) was replaced by the current one was related to military funding. In the old system, it was difficult to raise an army for shared purpose (e.g. fighting the revolutionary war) and there was potential for states to go to war with one another. The issues raised by that period will be familiar to anyone following European integration projects. Some hard-line libertarians in the US remember the Articles of Confederation fondly, because of the limits it imposed on government power.