Check out Ken Anderson’s It’s Congress’s War, Too in the New York Times Magazine. Here’s a taste:
But where are the people’s elected representatives in all this? After all, the Hamdan decision, despite leaving many momentous questions open, makes one thing reasonably clear: responsibility for democratically establishing policy in the war on terror falls to the legislative branch. So where is Congress? Irrespective of where you come down in the debate on the war on terror — including whether it should even be conceived of as a war — counterterrorism policy should be formed through Congressional legislation, the only legitimate mechanism for the long haul in a democracy. This ought to be a priority for both Congress and the Bush administration, because no matter who wins the 2008 election — or the 2006 midterms — there is not likely to be any coherent national counterterrorism policy at all past the end of the second Bush administration unless Congress takes steps to legislate it and go beyond merely executive discretion.