Maybe you think so, but I beg to differ. Al Qaeda issued a fatwa against the United States. Congress passed a resolution equivalent to a declaration of war.
I noticed that NY State appears to be your home. I didn't need television to see that smoke was coming from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. This was a second attempt on the World Trade Center. I hope your scholarship is not supposed to include current events, especially those involving terrorism.
We are certainly facing a threat, and one that may justify a few extra limitations on civil liberties (preferrably approved by Congress, though temporary exceptions can reasonably be made), but an undefined threat of this sort is not enough to justify special "war powers"--powers that essentially trump normal civil liberties.