The founders were especially concerned that the federal government would be used by special interests to pledge our country to war. They knew that war posed the greatest risk to our well being, both economically and spiritually (let alone the loss of lives). Many safeguards were implanted in to the constitution in an attempt to prevent this from happening.

Foremost, the founders required that only Congress could declare war. Given that we are a republican form of government, the founders wanted this most important decision to come only after a full debate amongst the representatives of the people. They absolutely did not want the executive branch to be making the decision to go to war.

Unfortunately, this has been exactly how we as a nation have gone to war since World War II.

The decision to invade Iraq was unconstitutionally delegated to President Bush by Congress (as Congress did not want to be politically accountable for the decision).  I have no doubt that if congress had performed its constitutional responsibility to investigate the evidence that was used to justify invading Iraq they would have discovered the lack of credibility of that evidence.

In addition, the will of the people at that time was strongly against invading Iraq.  Millions of people had gone to the streets throughout the world in opposition to the pending attack.  In contrast, the only proponents for the invasion were the administration and their neoconservative advisers.

This is a perfect example of how the liberty of the people can only be preserved by the people themselves. If, we the people had been educated on this constitutional requirement Congress would not have been allowed to "wash their hands" of their most important duty.