Ok, call it a "special military operation" if you want. A war by any other name would smell just as bad.

And what is Congress - or any other part of the US government - going to do about the pedophile not following rules? Stop him? How? Every potential check and balance has either been defanged or is controlled by his supporters.

Probably nothing. Also it’s not like the Democrats have much moral high ground to stand on here either (considering that Obama did more or less the same thing several times).

But congress can of course stop Trump from doing this and a whole bunch of other stuff. The problem is that it just chose not to and to give up much of its powers to the executive over the years (in practice if not legally) due to partisan reasons..

Why can't you be at war without officially declaring it? We have had lots of wars not declared by congress. Korean War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq. This seems like a weird way to think.

Explicit authorization is still required even if there there is no explicit declaration of war.

The caveat being that the president only needs to get the approval of congress after 60 days.

And of course Obama established a precedent with his intervention in Libya which weakened this even more…

Being required legally doesn't change the actual fact of war. Sure it is breaking the law. I don't see how Libya is the one in the long list to set this precedent of illegally non-declared war.