"...what you're not doing is pointing to the Constitutional authority to use the military for anything other than "Defense."
It never ceases to amaze me, how 'Literalists' continue to try, in this day and age, to drag the government back to a post-Colonial mindset, with respect to War Powers and Standing Armies and Militias and social programming and all the rest.
Constitutional Law, and interpretations of Constitutional Law, are a living, breathing, dynamic, multi-generational and never-ending evolutionary process.
Even the most ardent Minimalists of the Revolutionary Era, could they be temporarily time-warped into the future and brought up to speed on the range of issues and events that led us to where we are now, would, in all likelihood, concede that they were at least somewhat myopic in their original Constitutional Vision, and that 'we' were right to turn their Magnum Opus into an evolutionary process, so that the core of their Vision could remain intact, while continuing to evolve and adapt and remain relevant centuries after it was first tendered.
We have spent the past two centuries and more 'evolving' the Constitution of the United States, and, although we could have done a better job in topical area A or B or C, overall, we've done a damned fine job of keeping both the Letter and the Spirit of the Constitution alive while giving ourselves enough philosophical and legal and operational and practical Elbow Room to continue to grow and to thrive and to survive under the aegis of that Original Work.
It is quite true that 'we' have stretched the interpretation of Part A or B or C of the Constitution damned-near to the breaking point, in some instances, but, in most instances, 'we' have merely stretched the Constitution in order to align it more closely with the Realities of the Times, and, other than some occasional pain-in-the-ass Judicial Activism that manifests itself against the Will of the People, for the most part, that Constitutional Evolutionary Process is righteous and just what is needed.
'We' settled this War Powers business long ago, and tweaked it again, within living memory. Frankly, it could probably use even
more work, but I, for one, do not favor a return to the way in which it was perceived in the immediate post-Colonial era.
This is not 1790.
The world, and we, have changed greatly since then.
And we cannot run our country nor interact with the rest of the world not interpret our Constitution as if it
was 1790.
That just won't cut it, in the Real World, which is where most of us are obliged to dwell.