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Comment by mingus88 | Hacker News Reader

We didn’t start a war. That is a thing that Congress has sole authority to declare, and that hasn’t happened.

Also a thing that never happened: the Department of Defense was not renamed to the Department of War because only Congress has the authority to rename government departments. That vote never happened and the Department was not renamed.

Just reminding everyone that this is not normal, and it’s not legal, and the exact people who have a sworn duty to stop this are not.

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Congress hasn't issued a declaration of war that was signed by the president since June of 1942.

We've had wars since then.

edit,

Two recent examples from a long list:

The Persian Gulf War was admitted to be as such in April of 1991. https://www.congress.gov/102/statute/STATUTE-105/STATUTE-105...

The Global War on Terror was funded on that name in 2005. https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/house-bill/1268

Other examples exist for things like The War in Afghanistan, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, and similar. But I'm not trying to write an unprompted book here on this fine October night. :)

(Maybe Congress didn't declare those wars, but they sure seemed to accept participation in them nonetheless.)

I'm almost 40 years old. The US has basically been at war my entire life in some form or another. Not a single war was declared by congress, I don't think.

This is very much normal. I'm not saying it's correct or alright, just that it is normal.

The US Congress not declaring a war is the normal thing (for the last many decades).

We started a war and aren't calling it as such.

We are a democracy. We voted for this, gerrymandering .. Money still in politics .. wealth concentration .. and all.

It's a war. What you call it is immaterial, just like it doesn't matter that Putin refuses to call the invasion of Ukraine a war. The identity of a thing is not dependent on the label, it is inherent in the thing itself.

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