In the wake of last week’s attempted terrorist bombing in Times Square, legislation is being proposed to strip the would-be bomber of his American citizenship. Team Obama is opposing this bill, a bill at odds with the president’s blueprint for America.

The man who attempted to detonate a car bomb in New York City on May 1, Faisal Shahzad, was born in Pakistan and recently became an American citizen. Senator Joe Lieberman is now pushing legislation to strip Shahzad of his citizenship so that he can be treated as a foreigner in the U.S. legal system.

The pushback from President Obama’s supporters has been swift. Senator Chuck Schumer immediately declared such a bill unconstitutional. On a Sunday morning talk show, Attorney General Eric Holder expressed reluctance to pursue citizenship stripping. And others on the left are spouting off about this as well.

The constitutional law on this question is muddy. In 1958, the Supreme Court upheld a citizenship-stripping law in Perez v. Brownell. But then in 1967, the far-left Warren Court overruled Perez by a 5−4 vote in Afroyim v. Rusk, holding that Congress cannot strip anyone of citizenship unless that person voluntarily renounces it.

Then in the 1980 case of Vance v. Terrazas, the Supreme Court split the difference, moving back in the opposite direction. The Court modified its 1967 holding to clarify that in addition to renouncing American citizenship verbally or in writing, a person can renounce their citizenship by their conduct. The Court also held that whether their conduct amounts to renouncing citizenship can be determined by a “preponderance of the evidence,” meaning that the odds only need to be better than 50−50, instead of a higher standard such as “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

So the law is unclear in this case.

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On February 22, 1983, I raised my right hand in the Los Angeles MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station) and said, “I, Charles Stuart DeVore, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; That I will bear true faith And allegiance to the same…” With those words, I became United States Army Private First Class DeVore, joining the millions of others since 1789 who swore with their lives to “support and defend the Constitution.”

Unlike many veterans, I have been fortunate not to see combat. I was “officially” shot at only once; during the Los Angeles riots in 1992 (well, there was that time in Lebanon, but that wasn’t official; and I was carjacked in 1988 by Panamanian paramilitaries).

When the members of the armed forces of the United States of America fight, they do so not just for their colleagues in uniform next to them – virtually every soldier in history has done that – they do so not for king or country – they fight to preserve a document, the Constitution. In that, the United States Armed forces have become the greatest force for good, for freedom, that the world has ever seen because the Constitution exists to make a reality out of the promise of the Declaration of Independence to secure our “unalienable rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

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