Syria: Who decides who goes to War?

In the UpFront Magazine article "Going to War: Who Decides?" the author writes about the War in Syria and President Obama's decision to attack Syria. It also speaks about the past decisions that were made about who decides whether or not to go to War. Most of these decisions were based off interpretations of the Declaration of Independence. The author separates this information into 5 questions and gives some extra background information to fully understand the whole picture. There are a few main points in the recent decisions of attacking Syria that are heavily debated.
One question that is debatable is: Why did the Framers of the Constitution split the nation's powers between the executive and legislative branches? Is the system working out the way they envisioned? The Framers of the Constitution divided the powers between the executive and legislative branches to balance out the powers. Also known as the Checks and Balances system, this was used so that not only did the government have to work together, but it gave no one branch too much power. It is working out mostly as they envisioned. To their credit, they could not predict the certain circumstances that the U.S. would be in 250 years after the document was written. They left much of the document to be interpreted by the leaders of the following time period. But they wrote it in such a way that the main came across and they would have to distort the words in some way to make them apply to each particular situation. So yes it is working out as they envisioned, because they could not exactly know what kinds of problems the U.S. would be involved in the future, but wrote it so that it could be applied to it in whatever way it needed.
The second heavily debated question is: By asking congress to authorize an attack on Syria, did President Obama strengthen and unify the nation-or make himself and the nation appear indecisive? With President Obama's decision to ask congress about whether or not to go into Syria, it showed that the U.S. works together as a nation. Even though Obama is commander-in-chief and technically could've just made the decision by himself to go into Syria, he asked Congress because not only is this an extremely hard decision to make, but it's dealing with peoples lives and the future of the U.S. It did not make him look indecisive because this was a very tough decision to make, and it showed he is a real leader who isn't all about using his power, but making sure that it's the right decision for his country.
In conclusion, President Obama's decision to go to Congress and talk about going into Syria unified the country because it showed that Obama is all for making sure that the country is making the right decision and they are working together in the best interest of the U.S. This relates back to the Checks and Balances system, and it shows Obama respects that because he is making sure to incorporate the other branches even in a situation like this when he could just not listen to them all because he of his commander-in-chief position.