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.
We ALSO have a pres__ent who has said that his aim is NOT to win in Afghanistan. To me, that means he needs to get our people OUT of there NOW, since he has undermined our whole purpose for going in there to begin with. I was OK with going after the AQ and talibunnies when we first entered, with the goal of getting rid of them and perhaps being able to kill bin Laden. But after we did 2 of 3, the mission changed into a NON-MILITARY mission and at that point we should have left. You do NOT use military force to monitor elections or “build democracies” or any such other thing, even if it were Constitutional, which, of course, it is NOT.
Sorry, but keeping military forces where their mission is no longer a valid military mission makes no sense and gets folks killed when some jackass who stole an election decides to change the ROE with little to no notice and STOP protecting our forces by allowing them to protect themselves with artillery and close air support and whatever else is needful. They need to come home NOW. So do the guys and gals in Iraq, since we achieved our stated goal of getting the Hussein regime out of power and seeing Saddam hanged. The rest is NOT OUR MISSION.
With respect to a Declaration of War, pass the word that we will go to war with any nation that harbors and/or fails to root out terrorists who attack us from within their borders. That should cure that problem, I would think.