The OP implied that this was different-- as in an actual declaration of war. The cold war was never declared, am I right?

Vietname, Iraq I, Korea, etc. were declared but they were declared on specific enemies and thus had sunsets.

I do agree with your general point. We have been on this slippery slope for a very long time.

> Vietname, Iraq I, Korea, etc. were declared but they were declared on specific enemies and thus had sunsets.

The closest thing to a declaration of war in Vietnam was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which, while it mentioned Vietnam in its preamble, didn't mention any specific enemy in its operative clauses, and was, in fact, completely open-ended. The operative text of the resolution follows:

  Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
  the United States of America in Congress assembled, That 
  the Congress approves and supports the determination of  
  the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all 
  necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the 
  forces of the United States and to prevent further 
  aggression.

  Sec. 2. The United States regards as vital to its 
  national interest and to world peace the maintenance of 
  international peace and security in Southeast Asia. 
  Consonant with the Constitution of the United States 
  and the Charter of the United Nations and in accordance 
  with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective 
  Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore, 
  prepared, as the President determines, to take all 
  necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to 
  assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast 
  Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in 
  defense of its freedom.

  Sec. 3. This resolution shall expire when the President 
  shall determine that the peace and security of the area 
  is reasonably assured by international conditions 
  created by action of the United Nations or otherwise, 
  except that it may be terminated earlier by concurrent 
  resolution of the Congress.

>The OP implied that this was different-- as in an actual declaration of war. The cold war was never declared, am I right?

Exactly. And, perhaps more importantly, neither was the Cold War used to justify so many actions that would only be allowable in actual war time.

> Exactly. And, perhaps more importantly, neither was the Cold War used to justify so many actions that would only be allowable in actual war time.

Actually, it was. In fact, many of things that are happening now and are the focus of that complaint were also done during the Cold War, to the point when in one of the brief moments of reactions against those extremes at the end of the Nixon/Vietnam era where the Cold War excesses had reached a perceived (local, at least) maximum, attempts were made to put legal limits on them in. E.g., the War Powers Resolution and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

I knew someone would say that.

Let's explicitly narrow it to domestic actions (i.e., the context of this discussion).

Also, the phrase I used "so many actions".

That is, my post was not intended to assert that war powers had never been abused in the past.

> Let's explicitly narrow it to domestic actions (i.e., the context of this discussion).

You mean, like the use of the state of national threat to justify intrusive unrestrained domestic surveillance using the tools of foreign intelligence surveillance during the Cold War, to which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was a response (a response whose partial undoing in the FISA Amendments Act is one of the focal points of outrage in the recent complaints about domestic abuses justified by the "permanent war".)

Yeah, GP is still true when you limit it to domestic actions.

> Also, the phrase I used "so many actions".

If you want to support your claim with specifics, go ahead, but right now all I see is waving around generalities, and responding to the specifics raised in opposition with more generalities.

Specifics? Are you really asking me to enumerate them here?

How about you just start by reading the Patriot Act.