Top Obama Officials Disagree Over Whether U.S. At War With ISIS

TIME ^ | September 12, 2014 | by Zeke J Miller

[JoeFromSidney]

Has there been a declaration of war by Congress? If not, we are not at war. Someone else may be at war with us, but for us it's an undeclared war. If Congress were to declare war, against whom would it be? The Islamic State is not a recognized nation. So far it's an army and a geographical expression. Where is the seat of government? Who is the executive? How are laws made (even Saddam Hussein said, the law is two lines above my signature).

The big issue is not whether we're at war, but whether we have a defined goal and a proposed path for reaching it. Air strikes are tactics, not strategy. Even forming alliances is a tactical move, not a strategic one. Until Obummer defines the war goals and how he intends to reach them, he has no strategy. He's just winging it.

There's another issue with regard to declaring war. When I was at the War College back in 1971, we had a speaker from the Administration. One of the students asked, why didn't we declare war against North Vietnam? The speaker replied that there are a lot of laws on the books (rationing, allocation of resources to industry, etc.) that go into effect upon a declaration of war. The Administration realized they'd mess up the economy, and it wasn't worth reconstituting the World War II economy just to fight North Vietnam. I lived through WW II, and I remember how the government messed up the economy by trying to run it from Washington. Rationing of this, that and the other. Allocating resources to defense industries. Regulations out the wazoo. It was a mess, and I don't want to see it repeated. Especially not for the Islamic State.