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So, Greybird states that [those who] welcome, harbor, fund and train these sort of thugs are not a threat to the United States?

Greybird said no such thing. Greybird said that the proper business of the U.S. military is the defense of residents and their property within the United States. (I might extend that to international waters.)

Push this to mobilizing the military about hijackings or other heinous mayhem in other nations, or their territorial waters, and you have no logical stopping point. I don't believe that the Achille Lauro was in international waters when it was hijacked. If not, the owners, crew, and passengers were properly construed as taking their own risks, however great, and should have provided for them on their own.

By the way, a thoroughly Constitutional tool for dealing with such assholes does exist -- letters of marque and reprisal. (Essentially, "licenses" to kill or plunder in finding wrongdoers, with immunity from U.S. prosecution for doing so.)

You know, I had all sorts of stuff that I was going to throw at you. For instance, I was going to point out how your conditions for the use of combat power were either never adopted by the Founders or (at best) were already obsolete by the early 1800s when we used the U.S. Navy to nail the Barbary Pirates. But then I got a clue. Then I remembered what the real issue is.

In 1993, terrorists bombed the World Trade Center. Their aim was to knock one tower into the other, bringing them both down. They mixed chemicals into the bomb that they believed would produce cyanide gas, so that rescuers and survivors of the initial blast would choke and suffocate. Had things gone according to plan for them, 50,000 casualties would have been the minimum we could expect.

In 2001, terrorists again targeted the towers. This time they succeeded. Again, had things gone according to plan, they might have killed as many as 50,000 people. Remember that on the evening of the attack Rudy Giuliani said that there might be as many as 20,000 dead, and he knew as much at that moment as anybody did about how wonderfully the FDNY had done their job.

So that's the bottom line. In the last ten years, terrorists twice tried to kill 50,000 of us in one day, but for some reason you believe that dealing with this problem is not a proper national security interest. If you really want to argue that we should not pre-empt those who would kill thousands of us, or that we have no right to deal with those who kill Americans if the victims happen to be outside our borders at the time, feel free. It will only help the Darwin Award committee give you your deserved prize with due speed. However, you have no grounds for your charges of hypocrisy against those of us who support the war against Jihadistan, so please refrain from making them in the future. We don't believe the Constitution is a suicide pact. You do. The fact that you think that makes you a better American than the rest of us is infinitely pathetic.