Some "expert" on CNN named Amy Walters just agreed with the anchorwoman that Congress doesn't have a "concrete" way of influencing the President's "broad" war-making powers under the Constitution. Both of these individuals claimed that Congress's only point of leverage here is the power of the purse. Yet here is the relevant text of Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution, laying out the powers of the Congress with respect to war and military affairs:
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces
And the Constitution says of the President's powers only that he is "Commander-in-Chief." Now you can stare at that "commander-in-chief" provision all day and read all you want into it, as the President's lawyers do. But the clear intent of the Framers, to me, seems to have been to
avoid the concentration of military power in the Executive. There is a powerful argument for at least shared or co-equal responsibility between the branches with respect to war-making (what Harold Koh has called "The National Security Constitution"), if not a pre-eminent role for Congress. My reading of the C-in-C clause is that it limits the President's discretion to everyday management and tactical decision-making in the Armed Forces, as would be prudent given the need for unitary and expeditious action in a theater of war. But at all times the President is to "Take Care that the Laws Be Executed," laws which the Executive after all has signed and made effective, no less in the realm of national security than on any other subject.