Army Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Gantt had gone missing during the Korean War and had always been presumed dead. Although he had told Clara to remarry in the event of his death, she never did. She instead waited for him to return. Last December, he finally did.

The episode should cause Americans to reflect on another of the many negative consequences that came with the adoption of the U.S. national-security state apparatus in the aftermath of World War II. That consequence is the omnipotent power of the national security state to sacrifice American citizens for the sake of foreign regimes.

U.S. involvement in the Korean War clearly violated the provisions of the U.S. Constitution, the higher law that the American people imposed on the federal government when they called it into existence. The Constitution prohibits the president from involving our country in a war unless he secures a declaration of war from Congress. No declaration, no war, no matter how much the president wants it.