And it's not a requirement per the constitution. The Constitution says in Artile 1 Section 8 that the Congress has the power to delare war. It doesn't tell them how to do it. However they do it, they should vote on it and be accountable for their votes. If they are smart they put the objectives in the bill so they can hold the President to it.
It's not a question of "rehashing it," and it's ludicrous to just carry on as if nothing is wrong simply because it wasn't done right in the first place.
LEGAL DEFINITION OF WAR DECLARATION: "A declaration of war is an act of national legislature, in which a state of war is declared to exist between U.S. and some other nation. This power is vested in Congress by U.S. Constitution. For declaration of war no ceremony is necessary except passage of the act."
Without a war declaration you are living in a dictatorship where the President has the unfettered authority to exert U.S. military power wherever he damn well pleases. Please tell me where that preposterous attitude belongs anywhere in the mind of a conservative. In addition, you'll note that a declaration of war involves an act of Congress to establish the legal basis of a hostile relationship between the U.S. and another nation. None of this is warfare in any legal context. This is the U.S. taking sides in a civil war in some Third World sh!t-hole.
You know that Obama wanted out of Iraq. The Iraqis wanted anywhere from 10,000 - 20,000 troops to stay in the new SOFA agreement. Obama offered somewhere around 3,500 which was a joke. Maliki knew this would do nothing and he had to look elsewhere for his support and cut the U.S. loose. Obama got to say, hey I tried they didn't want us there and he got what he wanted, troop pullout.
Obama wanted out of Iraq? Sure. I also know that BUSH wanted out of Iraq. And his signature appears on a November 2008 Status of Forces Agreement to prove it. Stop the revisionist history here. Obama withdrew the final U.S. combat troops before the end of 2011 because they no longer had any right to be there. Iraq had a new government and constitution by that time, which meant the U.S. military could not operate as an occupying force in Iraqi territory anymore. Obama got their asses out of there because everyone in the executive branch of the U.S. government with an IQ over 50 told him that a U.S. soldier can no longer operate in a foreign country whose government insisted that these people must be subject to Iraqi law, not the U.S. Code of Military Justice.
Go back to my previous comment about the legalities of war. Those legalities actually mean something.
You are taking my words out of context. I said those 2,000 troops are there to eliminate the last pocket of ISIS resistance, protect and finish training our Kurdish allies and put a check on Iran and ensure they get out. If Iran stayed there, that would destabilize the region eventually. With the Turkey, Russian, Iranian talks going on right now and the Kurds starting to eliminate those last ISIS members, I imagine we could have pulled them out sometime next year. It's like we spiked the ball on the five yard line before going in for a touchdown.
A better analogy would be that we spiked the ball on the field before going in for a touchdown, when everyone in the stands finally figured out that the game they are watching is baseball, not football. The game is over. Trump gave Mattis a year and a half to convince him that he knew what the hell he was doing in Syria, and the troops are leaving because it's obvious he didn't. Mattis was a football coach, not a baseball manager.
It's all a moot point now as the news is out that Saudi and UAE are sending troops in to protect the Kurds and assist them. This is good news and will ensure our national interest objectives are met.
None of which, in fact, is a "national interest" at all.
Syria was in a civil war and gassing it's own people. They had no control over the areas we are in and ISIS claimed itself as a sovereign state there. You could say we weren't going into Syria but the ISIS caliphate. They had large swaths of Iraq and Syria. Iraq wanted us in and after ISIS fled into Syria do you think they would just stay there if we don't go after them? To use your metaphor, if a robber comes in your house and you manage to chase him out and kill one of his friends, they might come back. You're gonna want to ensure that never happens.
Syria has been in a state of civil war for decades. What changed in the last few years?
A better analogy is that a robber breaks into your neighbor's house, and you manage to chase him out and kill one of his friends. When the neighbor comes home, YOU don't tell HIM when you're leaving. You get your ass out the door as soon as he asks you to leave. He might even have a beer with you if you help him bury the body in the back yard.