[dane-pgp]

I don't know enough about US law, but if the president is required (at least in theory) to receive authorisation from congress before (or after) attacking an enemy nation, is there not some equivalent requirement for using the military apparatus against an ally?

Perhaps the constitution allows the president to do whatever he or she wants with the military (as long as it is within the historic bounds of what militaries do) without triggering the need for congressional approval unless it reaches a "state of war" at which point people might actually start dying.

That would seem like the sort of practical level of discretion that a country would give its executive branch, but I can't help thinking that there could or should be some law somewhere that gave the president's actions against allies some type of legislative basis, so that voters had an idea of how the president would use these secretive powers, and could hold the executive to account at the ballot box.