That's the case with Korea.

Today, there are 28,500 U.S. troops in Korea. Why are they stationed there? They're stationed there to ensure automatic U.S. involvement in a war that breaks out between North Korea and South Korea.

U.S. troops in Korea are what might be called a "tripwire." If North Korean forces attack the South, it is a virtual certainty that some of those 28,000 U.S. troops will be killed in the process. The Pentagon knows full-well that those deaths will automatically guarantee that the United States will be part of the war.

That is not what the Framers had in mind when they brought the federal government into existence with the Constitution.

The federal government that the Framers brought into existence was notable in the following two ways: One, the federal government had no standing army. Two, before a president could wage war against another country, he was required to first secure a declaration of war from Congress.