“Breach of treaties and truces are ‘offenses against the Laws of Nations’ and congress is given a separate clause to ‘define and punish’ said offenses.”
Yeah, Matt, that’s what the Afghan resolution was: a punishment expedition. Then we started getting bogged down and now look at where we are. I think the resolution was more akin to “hot pursuit” than anything else and that’s fine. But when we have time to sit and mull things over and jawjack about stuff, we have time to draft a proper declaration of war. Like we should have in Iraq if things were so bad FOR US there.
That is absolutely fair to consider and discuss. My concern with that is that we already have a legal and actionable document with the Authorization of the Use of Force. Going back to the drawing board and changing this to a Declaration of War has several challenges, not in the least is that you now have a bunch of politicians in DC given the opportunity to tweak and modify action orders and even dumping on those in the field, simply to satisfy the political winds of pop culture versus simply being held accountable for the authorization they already approved. The other issue I see is that a Declaration of War is generally against a specific state or regime versus our current conflict deals with an enemy that crosses or doesn’t bear allegiance to specific states and/or whose regimes change names faster than mafia families.