Never heard of Wills? Whet your appetite with his masterpiece and best work (in my humble opinion): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29435.Nixon_Agonistes
We got very good at gray area nonsense. The Korean War is not a war, it's a conflict. The Vietnam War is not a war, it's an engagement. We have police actions, "peacekeeping" operations, and a hundred other things...but not "wars".
We have the "global war on terror" and the accompanying Authorization for the Use of Military Force, created in the wake of 9/11 and still in effect today.
Congressional approval of military action is fundamentally dead.
That said this particular bug for starting wars without congress has been exploited for decades with no patches in site
> Gödel's Loophole is a supposed "inner contradiction" in the Constitution of the United States which Austrian-American logician, mathematician, and analytic philosopher Kurt Gödel postulated in 1947. The loophole would permit America's republican structure to be legally turned into a dictatorship.
I’m glad that trump has returned us to a world where quotes from the 5th century bc seem like commentary on current affairs, since it means that all my time learning about power dynamics in political systems during antiquity is now completely relevant to dealing with current events, rather than a giant waste of time.
1983 Granada 1989 Panama 2011 Libya 2012 Syria
The 1990s actions in Yugoslavia were done without fall declaration of war, but Congress was more fully engaged in saying no at least.
The 1991 war against Iraq was approved, in part, because the administration allowed a witness to flat out lie to Congress about the horrors of the Iraq invasion of Kuwait.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was approved, in part, because the administration lied to Congress about weapons of mass destruction.
I mentioned these last two because they make a mockery of the act itself, or of the US congress, or both...
So it seems he's allowed to do this? It's still within 48 hours, so he has time to officially "notify" Congress, if he hasn't done so already. And since this was an aerial bombing, no armed forces remain there, so the 60-day bit is irrelevant.
