A lovely summary of law pertinent to wars against nations. AQ is not a nation; therefore your argument is based upon a false premise. There is no Constitutional provision for such a "war." AQ has no one to "surrender." It cannot conclude a peace treaty. Congress had plenty of time to have passed a Constitutional amendment if necessary by which to have defined such a "war," and did not.
That's your tough luck sirrah. If you can't convince enough of your fellow citizens to elect such a Congress as you think necessary, don't go flouting the Constitution "because it's necessary" and not expect the enemy within to do exactly the same.
They are not criminals they are enemies.
I never said they (AQ et al.) were criminals. I don't think criminal law has any place against AQ unless the person in question is an American citizen, a point which you have conveniently omitted in your windy diatribe. It is a distinction that obviously matters. Hence, I think said argument is therefore, deliberately disingenuous.
Still, whether you like it or not, Awlaki was considered an American citizen (by an unconstitutional "anchor baby" standard by the way). That citizenship means he is GUARANTEED certain unalienable rights. It also means he is a traitor, which IS a crime. Assert to the contrary all you want; it is a position that is unsupportable when the individual in question is an American citizen.
So conservatives must make sure that Congress contains people with the guts to rein in any president who tries to convert the power to wage war on an enemy that declared war on the country to the ability to constrain political opposition.
Were nations capable of doing as you suggest, there would be no need for Constitutionally limited government in the first place. With this "plan," you might as well go write "STOP!!!" in the sand facing an incoming tide.
Any power, once accrued by the government, can be wielded by the opposition. It is a fact, all your Pollyanna wishes notwithstanding. In fact, it is my opinion that President Bush had exactly that intent, which makes your proposal even more foolish. The existence of multiple checks among separated powers is the essence of Constitutionally limited government, the necessity for which supersedes such expediency as you would expect the people to "enforce" against the tyranny of the urgent.
We have been in a state of emergency in this country since 1933. So given its obvious addiction to emergency powers over such an uninterrupted period, I think this "popular bulwark" here to be so ineffectual as to be laughable.
If you don’t like this or think it is too hard, you are no better than Dims crying to the courts to get their unpopular agenda shoved down our throats.
It is the deluded and incontinent who claim that their ends justify the means, that empower the fascist Democrats. Yet such is your argument. You apparently never studied Aristotle, for his Ethics lay out an rationale for why ends-justification is a logical fallacy so simple and clear that it is a wonder anybody ever tries to get away with it, as you have done here. Aristotle's observation goes like this (I'm paraphrasing it as a distillation): 'Nobody selects an end except as a means to something else. There are no "ends;" there are only means.' Clearly, by justifying the wildly unnecessary usurpation of power by an unchecked executive, you are the friend of socialism here, an ideology against which countless thousands of American soldiers have given their lives in the defense of freedom. You would throw it away, needlessly, in the name of expediency and no more when a Constitutional amendment was obviously needed and within reach.
No sale. Awlaki was in Yemen. He was no immediate threat to the life or limb of any American citizen (although he is certainly a dangerous traitor long term). That means the qualifying criteria for taking a life laid out in the Fifth Amendment have NOT been met. I want laws clearly defining what constitutes reasonable grounds for military execution of an American citizen traitor in a foreign combat theater as a member of an ill-defined extra-national rogue group. I want a means of issuing findings that American citizens have gone over. I WANT REAL ACTION TAKEN AGAINST ALIEN TERRORIST GROUPS WITHIN OUR BORDERS (something President Bush never undertook). The number of citizen traitor/combatants is so few that such laws are NOT an undue burden, as Obama's ROEs truly are. Your argument is therefore specious.
“AQ is not a nation”
Neither was the Confederate States of America nor any separatist group a nation. Yet they can in fact be at war as the US was in from 1861 to 1865, but I guess you think Lincoln need to to indict each member of the confederacy? They were all American citizens. Congress did not formally declare war.
BTW. if you look up war at dictionary.com, your implication that war requires two nation states is not supported. War is often between nation states but it need not be. So since you started with a wrong premise, the rest of your argument does not hold up.
Finally, the founders gave us a representative government. They did not trust government much, but they did trust the American people. Too bad you do not share that trust.