A State of Undeclared War

I woke up this morning with the idea that being in the position that the USA is in militarily - ostensibly being the most powerful military on the face of the earth - means that one never has to worry about losing a war anymore.
Of course, this does not guarantee one will win such a war, as history as pointed out to us with our ongoing commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody in their right mind thinks that we'll be out of either place anytime soon, certainly not 2014 for Afghanistan - although a force majeure may force us to leave... another economic crisis.
We were actually quite lucky that we were not bogged down forever in Vietnam. We could still be there if our leaders had their way, still fighting a losing war, still creating dysfunctional relations within a region of the world (by the way, a European report just came out that the USA backed and just elected Kosovo Prime Minister was the head of a Kosovo mafia-like gang.)

By Congress never declaring war anymore, it is off the hook, so to speak. It has been off the hook for a lot of things. These long term commitments have not been entered into with the approval of myself nor my elected representative. In school we learned this is a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. Now it seems no longer to be a representative democracy. And no one wins anymore, although there are plenty of losers. Undeclared war serves a different sociological function than declared wars did.
I have to work on how I feel about the loss of representative democracy for a while; I am bemused by it all.