The War Powers Act

I just read a post by Eric Posner, son of the conservative jurist Richard Posner and author of a book called The Executive Unbound, arguing that criticizing Harold Koh and John Yoo for advocating narrow interpretations of statutes to give the executive broader latitude in conducting foreign policy really amounts to criticizing the entire way American executives have handled foreign policy throughout history. I'm not sure I find his particular argument convincing, but I honestly don't really have a very easy time getting worked up about the War Powers Act. As I see it, basically, the Constitution prescribes a particular division of war-making powers: Congress is responsible for providing the military and for declaring war, and the executive is responsible for managing war. Maybe the practice in the post-WWII world of not really declaring war is unconstitutional. Maybe the executive really can just bomb some random country without asking Congress. Maybe NATO and the UN really are constitutional commitments of support for international military undertakings that change the prior balance of power among the branches of the U.S. government. But whatever the truth is about all of those issues, they are issues that Congress cannot change by simple statute. If Congress must declare all wars, and that includes everything from Vietnam to Iraq to Libya, then Congress can't give the President a 60-day window to conduct undeclared wars. Likewise, if these types of conflict can be legitimately begun by the President, I don't see that Congress can say that 60 days later the Commander-in-Chief needs to ask for authorization. Now, of course, Congress can always defund anything it wants, but in terms of formal war-making powers I just don't think that the process can be changed by a simple law. Whether you favor executive power or congressional power over war, the War Powers Act just isn't of a high enough constitutional stature to change what really ought to be going on. So yeah, Obama's violating the War Powers Act. But so what?