> True, but they gave him blanket authorization for use of military force (open ended) rather than a declaration of war), this open-endedness allowed Obama! to

> True, but they gave him blanket authorization for use of military force (open ended) rather than a declaration of war), this open-endedness allowed Obama! to use the same AUMF to engage in further conflict. If anything, your points here only go to demonstrate how irrelevant the nominal power of congressional authorization is, in the current political climate (and for most of the history of the republic.) What makes it mostly irrelevant is that almost any representative voting for caution will be tarred with the "soft on America's enemies" brush, marginalized, and quickly removed from office. That's democracy in action, and it has been that way, for the most part, since the founding of the nation. What kept the USA in Afghanistan, and the USSR before, was a form of sunk cost fallacy (in blood more than dollars), in which nation-building became more of a prayer for a non-catastrophic exit than an arrogant goal of a self-appointed elite.