A responsibility the fine Congresspeople and Senators are seemingly more than happy to hand off to someone else.
As Rich Little used to say when doing his Richard Nixon impression, "I'll take the responsibility. Just not the blame."
The Congress, by 3 to 1 margins in both houses, approved "force" (i.e., acts of war) to overthrow Saddam. This is more than was done in most other wars fought by this country. And indeed, if you insist that a declaration of war must contain the word "war" then no nation has declared war in over 50 years.
First, it nowhere says in the Constitution that a declaration of war must contain the words "declare" and "war." So clearly, synonyms and other constructions, at least if they are unambiguous, amount to the same.
The Congress, if it were more pretentious, could say "we approve of belligerency against Iraq." If it wanted to focus more on the personality of Saddam, it could say "we authorize the President to kill Saddam Hussein" -- an act of war that would obviously give casus belli to Saddam's military and other agents, and would require the use of military force. Or it could authorize any other acts of war explicitly, authorizing the President to do whatever was specified. Finally, if we now spoke French (something that would not have seemed out of the question to the framers of the Constitution regarding a point over 200 years in the future), the Congress could authorize "guerre" instead of "war" and the Constitutional requirement would have been just as well meant.
And second, the only way to stop the President from waging an undeclared war is to remove him as Commander in Chief. Judges and Congressmen cannot order troops around. Military command cannot be divided, and by definition it belongs to the Commander in Chief. The way to get a new Commander in Chief is to impeach and convict the President, in this case of improper waging of war. In some circumstances that would be politically feasible (e.g., Bush bombs Toronto), but in this case it is not, precisely because three-fourths of the Congress has explicitly authorized the use of military force against Iraq.
Considering the way that the Democrats in congress screw the pooch when it comes to matters as simple as confirming a Circuit Court justice, I'd have to say I have absolutely no confidence in their appropriately handling something of far greater importance (such as declaring war).
Don't like it? Then tell the Democrats to get off their filibustering dead @$$es.
-Jay