You will be relieved to know that President Obama didn’t violate the Constitution or the War Powers Act when he launched us into a third totally unnecessary war because he is telling Congress the Libya action isn’t really a war. From Politico:

White House officials told Democratic and Republican congressional aides Tuesday that the U.S. is not at war with Libya and, without laying out a timeline, that the president hopes to hand over control of coalition military operations in the next few days.

This revelation is quite shocking to me because it seems I have spent the last 27 years in ignorance not knowing the actual meaning of the word “war.”

To prevent confusion like this in the future, I suggest always applying a simple test to tell the difference between a war and a non-war military intervention. In news headlines about the military action, replace “United States” with “Belize” and replace the name of whatever country we are attacking with “Florida.” If, after reading these modified headlines, most Americans would say Belize “launched a war against us,” we are at war.
So, for example, this morning, if I read the headline Belize launched 130 Tomahawk Missiles at Florida or Belize targets President Obama’s Ground Troops my first reaction would be that Belize just started a war against us
Apparently, though I’m to believe that if these headlines were read at the White House, President Obama would think Belize has taken part in military interventions in Florida, but would feel comfort beleiving Belize wasn’t actually at war with United States.