Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") is looking for the silver lining, and finds some doctrinal clarity.
Money quote(s):
"Out of the great and ongoing dithering, world sports & war by remote control tour some good may come. If the Libya no fly zone goat rope showed one thing it's that we have no coherent established and articulated policy for the use of military force. We have what seem to be some fairly clear guidance in the Constitution and the War Powers Act, and yet we don't seem to feel like holding our Presidents to the letter of those laws. We seem to recognize that a Commander in Chief needs some freedom of maneuver before having to herd those cats of Congress into a formal declaration of war or some lesser writ of ass kickery."
"Writ of ass kickery" is just pure gold.
Uncle Jimbo concludes, therefore, that:
"The President can, when he deems it necessary, under his Article II constitutional authority as CinC occasionally pummel bad actors, tyrants, terrorists, genocidists etc. as long as he does not roll tanks. It has been common practice for long enough now that we ought to just be able to nod our heads and agree. I don't want any President to have to ask Congress if he can whack a terrorist camp, or send a friendly cruise missile reminder to bad guys. These things can help focus the bad guy's minds on consequences and therefore avoid actual open conflict."
The problem is that these are acts of war, whether legal or Constitutional or not, and the adversary isn't likely to parse the nuances, dontchaknow.
The flip side of that is that the typical adversary has likely been waging war on us already, on the quiet and on the cheap, and didn't ask our Congress for permission to do that either.
