I've got to agree with Steve on this - it's certainly a point of concern leaving off any partisan considerations.

In some ways, it's an excellent lead in to discussing definitions of "war". Does a war have to be state vs. state (the old, post-Westphalian assumption)? Can you have a "declared" war against a non-state actor (personally, I would say that you can)? If so, what is the status, under international conventions, of the members of that non-state actor?

Most of our thinking on these questions isn't really well developed - we've spent the last 4 centuries assuming that "war" refers to state vs. state despite evidence to the contrary. Politically, and by that I mean it in terms of political semantics, we need to really rethink our definitions and their implications. I don't think that tis is so much a case of party politics as it is a case of general political discourse.