I'd like to agree but this conflating of "war" and "criminal act" is the thing I was worried about back in Sept. 2001.
Unlawful combatants and spies in a declared war do not get 3 squares, flat screen TV, and ping pong. They do not get refugee visas. They do not get released into family neighborhoods in Virginia to compensate for their grievances.
They get a military hearing followed by a firing squad or hanging.
We'll be lucky indeed if our ACLU-infested civilian criminal justice system sends Kahlid Sheik Mohammad to a cement room at the Florence ADX Supermax with his nephew Ramsi Yousef.
The Brits weren't prepared for many POWs so he was sent to the United States as soon as we entered the war.
He spent the next 5 years working on a sugar beet plantation in Arizona.
Initially he and some others were kept in a bunkhouse. Later on they got moved to a vacant house where they had a stove to cook on.
By the end of the war he could speak fluent English, had become very knowledgeable regarding the uses of sugar beets (he ended up owning an industrial soap company in Germany), and regularly drove himself into town using the plantation's vehicles.
We are not talking about that kind of person being held at Guantanamo.
It's more like another fellow I knew who'd been 12 years old when the Japanese opened a POW camp in Indonesia. The Japanese thought Asiatic children were not dangerous. My friend spend many a night climbing under the wire to take explosives, ammunition and guns in to the prisoners. During the day he'd talk with the Korean guards (Japanese used Korean guards 'cause they were meaner'n hell) until he knew enough Korean to protect himself from discovery.
As we recall the English had been attacked in Europe. They defended themselves long before Parliament got around to passing any sort of war declaration. The Indonesians weren't even self-governing so they couldn't have passed a declaration of war but it was pretty clear to my friend, a 12 year old at the time, that Japan was making war against them and serious action was required.
When it comes to the current war it was Afghanistan/AlQaida that attacked us first. When it comes to the situation in Iraq we were there following a UN mission regarding Iraqi violations of the agreement they'd made to end Gulf War I.
Certainly the USA can defend itself and launch retaliatory actions without a "formal" anything.
The b*5+*rdz fired at use first.