Don't you see that the new war in Somalia is the same old war Congress authorized 15 years ago?

In 2001, Congress authorized the President "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

Although a separate authorization was acquired in 2002 to go to war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, it is the 2001 authorization that President Obama has relied on whenever he's felt a need to say that Congress has authorized the war with ISIS, and Congress hasn't pushed back.

Now, we learn that President Obama is interpreting the 2001 authorization to support a war against he Shabab in Somalia! The NYT reports:

The executive branch’s stretching of the 2001 war authorization against the original Al Qaeda to cover other Islamist groups in countries far from Afghanistan — even ones, like the Shabab, that did not exist at the time — has prompted recurring objections from some legal and foreign policy experts....

“It’s crazy that a piece of legislation that was grounded specifically in the experience of 9/11 is now being repurposed for close air support for regional security forces in Somalia,” said Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations....

In Somalia, the United States had long taken the position that a handful of Shabab leaders, as individuals, had sufficient ties to Al Qaeda to make them wartime targets. But it has debated internally for years whether the Shabab as a whole, including their thousands of foot soldiers, can or should be declared part of the enemy....

But as American partners have been going after the Shabab in general more often without any particular focus on individuals linked to Al Qaeda, it has been harder to point to any congressional authorization for such airstrikes that would satisfy the War Powers Resolution.

As the election neared, the administration decided it would be irresponsible to hand off Somali counterterrorism operations to Mr. Obama’s successor with that growing tension unresolved. Now, as Mr. Zenko pointed out, “this administration leaves the Trump administration with tremendously expanded capabilities and authorities.”

If the GOP Congress didn't stand up to Obama and balance his exercise of war power, it's hard to see how it will interfere with President Trump. Any Democrats (and other nonTrumpists) who cry out about an overpowerful President acting without express support from Congress will have to answer for why they did not make this argument when Obama was building the power of the presidency.

IN THE COMMENTS: MadisonMan takes issue with my last sentence: "Answer to whom? The non-questioning press who will only harp on Trump?"

Should the GOP Senators get started confirming Merrick Garland before the election?

I'm reading "Flake says it might be Garland time" (at Politico). Arizona Senator Jeff Flake is saying that even before election day, perhaps the GOP-controlled Senate should move on confirming Garland. Why not wait until after the election (and avoid the in-your-face lack of confidence in Trump)?

Flake's comments come as the Senate GOP weighs how to deal with a Clinton nomination to the Supreme Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has ruled out taking up Garland in the lame duck. But that raises the prospect that Clinton could pick someone other than Garland, whom Republicans once praised as a consensus nominee before rolling out a blockade intended to allow voters to weigh in before the vacancy is filled.

What I read between the lines there is: If they wait until after Clinton wins, to move on Garland is to deprive the President-elect of her choice. And that would be after they said that they needed to hold off on Garland because the American people should have the choice of what sort of Supreme Court we want. If the people decide for Clinton, shouldn't Clinton be the one to make the choice? The GOP Senators have held off, in the hope that the GOP candidate might win and get to make the appointment, but if they think Trump is going to lose, their best option might be to move on Garland while they still have a shred of a chance to act as though they're just doing the normal thing of confirming the President's nominee.

Should the GOP Senate move now to confirm Garland?

Yes. Confirming Garland works better before the election, and HC is almost sure to win.

Yes. It was Obama's nomination to make and they should have confirmed him already.

No. HC is going to win and, at this point, she deserves the appointment if she does.

No. The lack of faith in Trump is wrong, he might win, and his getting the appointment is important.

No. Filling the seat has been an issue in the election, and it's too late to take that away from us.

No. There's time enough to confirm Garland if and when Hillary wins.

I don't understand this enough to want to vote in this poll but still want an option.

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Poll results:

"The U.S. should not turn control of the Internet over to the United Nations and the international community."

"President Obama intends to do so on his own authority – just 10 days from now, on October 1st, unless Congress acts quickly to stop him.  The Republicans in Congress are admirably leading a fight to save the Internet this week, and need all the help the American people can give them to be successful. Hillary Clinton’s Democrats are refusing to protect the American people by not protecting the Internet."

A statement of Donald Trump's opposition to Obama's "Plan to Surrender American Internet Control to Foreign Powers."

"Republicans finally pass an Obamacare repeal. Do GOP voters care?"

"Republicans have never passed an Obamacare repeal through both houses of Congress, forcing Obama to veto. That changed Wednesday."

... Americans already know where the president stands on these issues. Observers say the real point is to remind voters what could happen if a Republican is sitting in the Oval Office and the GOP keeps control of Congress....

How did the bill get through the Senate? They used “budget reconciliation.”

The process allows a bill to avoid a Senate filibuster and pass by simple majority. It’s this procedure that Democrats used to pass the health care law in the first place – and it’s this route that Republicans, after gaining control of the Senate last year, used to finally get this bill to the president’s desk.

"The Farcical Debate Over an Authorization for the War on ISIS."

"... In other words, Obama will continue the war in Iraq and Syria regardless of what Congress does, and he will keep pretending that he has legal authority to do this even if they never vote on it."

The only reason he is even bothering to ask Congress for a new authorization vote is to make a political statement about support for the intervention. Under these circumstances, the debate would be a farce. There would be no danger that the vote might come out “wrong,” and so the debate would be even more heavily skewed in favor of war than it usually is. Congress would be participating in the process with the understanding that its involvement is purely for show, and so I doubt most members would take the debate seriously....

Obama doubles down on his comparison between Iranian hardliners and Republicans who oppose his Iran deal.

"'What I said is absolutely true, factually,' Obama told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview that will air in full Sunday."

"The truth of the matter is, inside of Iran, the people most opposed to the deal are the Revolutionary Guard, the Quds Force, hardliners who are implacably opposed to any cooperation with the international community... The reason that Mitch McConnell and the rest of the folks in his caucus who opposed this jumped out and opposed this before they even read it, before it was even posted, is reflective of a ideological commitment not to get a deal done. In that sense they do have much more in common with the hardliners who are much more satisfied with the status quo."

Was he asked about Chuck Schumer? Or was that interview recorded before — as the NYT put it — "Senator Chuck Schumer, the most influential Jewish voice in Congress, said Thursday night that he would oppose President Obama’s deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program":

“Advocates on both sides have strong cases for their point of view that cannot simply be dismissed,” Mr. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a lengthy statement. “This has made evaluating the agreement a difficult and deliberate endeavor, and after deep study, careful thought and considerable soul-searching, I have decided I must oppose the agreement and will vote yes on a motion of disapproval.”

What do you think of the Times's qualifier "the most influential Jewish voice in Congress"? I was a bit stunned.

The headline there is: "Chuck Schumer Opposes Iran Nuclear Deal, Shaking Democratic Firewall." So there was a "firewall." That "firewall" protected Obama as he doubled down on the idea that only Republicans oppose the deal — it's a partisan thing. Those terrible Republicans! They're like death-to-America Iranian hardliners.

And then along comes Chuck, screwing up the big man's polemic. What to do now? Point out that Schumer's Jewish??!

"Senate Democrats handed President Obama a stinging rebuke on Tuesday..."

"... blocking consideration of legislation granting their own president accelerated power to complete a major trade accord with Asia."

The Senate voted 52-45 on a procedural motion to begin debating the bill to give the president “trade promotion authority,” eight votes short of the 60 needed to proceed. Republicans and pro-trade Democrats said they would try to negotiate a trade package that could clear that threshold.

The link goes to the NYT, where the top-rated comment is:

Why the rush to fast track this? Why can't we, the voters, see what's in this agreement? Why are the details secret? A full transparent discussion of the whole thing should be conducted before signing on to such legislation. Who will make money and who will lose money? Americans deserve to know what exactly is in this trade deal. It is not as though we don't have good reason to be suspicious about this.

The answer to the question I had that was the reason why I was refraining from writing about that Tom Cotton Iran letter.

I couldn't understand the nature of the controversy without knowing whether the letter was actually sent to Iran, and I read a bunch of articles about the letter without seeing an answer. Finally, this National Review headline popped up: "The Cotton Letter Was Not Sent Anywhere, Especially Not to Iran."

It was just an essay in the familiar (if not trite) form of an "open letter." It's a rhetorical device that assumes a point of view, as if X is talking to Y. We can criticize the form and the content.

As content, it undercuts (or seems to undercut) what the President seems to be trying to do. I don't know what the President is really doing with respect to Iran, but I am observing what Iran is doing (being allowed/encouraged to do?) in Iraq. Members of Congress undercut the President sometimes, and having lived through the Vietnam era, I'm no going to say they should shut up entirely, but there is a line and we could argue about when it is crossed. I'd say Harry Reid went too far when he said "This war is lost."

But let's talk about the form. The form was great at getting attention, possibly too much attention. And speaking of attention, I don't think the letter is too well-written. The word "attention" is repeated in the first 2 sentences, and not in a good way. In an inattentive way. "It has come to our attention... we are writing to bring to your attention...." That comes across as pompous officialese, like something from a bill collector or from a lawyer who's trying to scare you into ceasing and desisting from something or other.

The letter proceeds to offer legal advice in an oversimplified and puzzling way. An executive agreement is only an executive agreement and will be regarded as an executive agreement. Yes, and? It's something the next president can "revoke... with a stroke of the pen." Style note: Get rid of any unintentional rhymes, especially when you're trying to sound all official and pompous.

The closing sentence features pretty words — "We hope this letter enriches your knowledge... and promotes mutual understanding and clarity...." Hope, knowledge, understanding, and clarity. Isn't this the standard move in letters from bill collectors and lawyers? End with a few nice words about going forward in a positive way?

I hope this blog post has enriched your knowledge and understanding as we move forward into the future.

"Antonin Scalia’s unintentional humor."

I don't think that was unintentional.

What Scalia said was:

What about Congress? You really think Congress is just going to sit there while all of these disastrous consequences ensue? I mean, how often have we come out with a decision such as the ­­ you know, the bankruptcy court decision? Congress adjusts, enacts a statute that takes care of the problem. It happens all the time. Why is that not going to happen here?

What got the laugh was the response — "Well, this Congress?" — from the Solicitor General.

Steve Benen, whose headline I've used as the post title, fails to appreciate the comic skill of the straight man. As Jerry Seinfeld once explained:

Where did the idea of, in Seinfeld, your character being a comedian for a profession, but be the straight man for your friends, come from? I always thought that juxtapositioning for the show was genius.

Very good observation and analysis on your part, Baxter. You are truly exhibiting a good comedic eye. The reason I would play straight was it was funnier for the scene. And very few people have ever remarked on this, because it was a conscious choice of mine, only because I knew it would make the show better, and I didn't care who was funny as long as somebody was funny and that the show was funny. So you have hit upon one of the great secret weapons of the Seinfeld series, was that I had no issue with that.

The straight man doesn't get the laughs, but he's setting up the humor. It's Scalia, not the Solicitor General, who deserves credit for that comedy. To say that his contribution was unintentional is to ascribe a ridiculous naivete to him. An honest person — that is, a person not in a lawyer role — answering the question "Why is that not going to happen here?" would describe the story of how one party rammed the Affordable Care Act through Congress, without any buy-in from the other party, and without building any consensus among the people, who were told to quiet down and wait and see that it would ultimately turn out to be good. The people subsequently shifted control of Congress to the party that had zero buy-in. Scalia knew all that when he asked his question. The humor already inhered. It's very dark humor, of course. The Solicitor General — tasked with upholding the work of a party that wielded power ruthlessly and consequently lost it — succeeded in lightening the humor, but that doesn't deserve comedy credit. It deserves lawyer credit.

Gail Collins hears my call.

3 days ago — in the comments to a post titled "Justice Ginsburg gently corrects those who heard her previous remark as a confession of drunkenness at the SOTU" — I wrote: "I wonder how soon the talk of her needing to resign will begin. Spring is near, the end of the term looms. People will be thinking this is Obama's last chance to do a nomination. And yet, the GOP controls the Senate, so maybe they will leave her alone."

And here's Gail Collins — we remember her embarrassing column last week — with a new column "The Unsinkable R.B.G./Ruth Bader Ginsburg Has No Interest in Retiring."

From the beginning, Ginsburg waved off the whole idea. (“And who do you think Obama could have nominated and got confirmed that you’d rather see on a court?”) Anyway, since Republicans took control of the Senate in January, it’s become pretty clear that ship has sailed.

“People aren’t saying it as much now,” she said with what sounded like some satisfaction.

On the subject of the aging and sleeping of Supreme Court Justices, a reader sent me 2 quotes from the book "Yankee from Olympus: Justice Holmes and His Family":

WaPo columnist says it's "trivial to compare" Roy Moore's trying to stop gay marriage in Alabama to George Wallace's blocking the door to racial integration at the University of Alabama.

But which way is it trivial? I couldn't believe the columnist Philip Bump could possibly say that what Moore is doing is a much bigger deal than what Wallace did, to the point where anyone just saying they are at the same level was being trivial, and Bump's convoluted verbosity makes it especially hard to see what one finds hard to believe. But I slogged through it, and I survived to report that Bump actually thinks Moore's resistance to the federal court requirement that Alabama immediately issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples is a far bigger deal that Wallace's resistance to integration.

Bump's hard-to-understand argument has to do with Obama's reelection in 2012 and the Republican victories in 2014.

Moore's move is very much in the "states' rights" vein of the 1960s, a 10th Amendment argument that's seen a renaissance in the era of a president who is deeply unpopular with Republicans. But it's hard to point to Moore's action as being simply Wallace redux when you consider the national picture. Boehner and McConnell are necessarily arguing for the primacy of local priorities, representing states and districts, not the whole country. In those places, Obama is so unpopular among their constituents that 66 percent of Republicans opposed working with Obama in the wake of last year's election; the response to his actions was similarly predictable. For the next two years, we have a Congress that was elected by Americans to be Republican and a president that was elected to be Democratic. Moore's battle is with the Supreme Court, hardly an arm of the Obama administration, but the political fervor he's likely to leverage echoes the strains in national politics.

Sorry to call attention to something so badly slapped together and so blatantly partisan in the bemoaning of partisanship, but I think the utter badness of the column deserves some attention.

I was surprised to see that Roy Moore was back on the Alabama Supreme Court. He got kicked out back in '03 over that 10 Commandments business. I hadn't noticed — or I'd forgotten — that he got elected to the position again in 2012. If it weren't for the reappearance of Moore, I would have passed by this topic — the same-sex topic of the week. There are so many of these states, falling one by one, to the seemingly inevitable consequences of earlier constitutional law decisions. I see the headlines, but, even though I've been blogging profusely about same-sex marriage since early 2004, I don't feel the call to blog every new state that finds itself subject to a judicial ruling. But Moore kicked up some resistance, and he's getting attention in the style that made him famous back in the simpler times, when passions swirled rather innocuously around 10 Commandments monuments, which no one gets heated up about anymore.

And I know this will bother some of you, but I think it's pretty obvious that in 10 years, we'll look back on the swirl of passion over same-sex marriage as something even more of the past than getting heated up over 10 Commandments monuments. People will be living their private lives, as they always have, and some of the people will be gay, as they always have been, and life will go on.

Meanwhile, "Clarence Thomas faults Supreme Court for refusing to block gay marriage in Alabama."

“This acquiescence may well be seen as a signal of the Court’s intended resolution of that question,” Thomas wrote in a dissent from the court’s order refusing to stay the weddings. “This is not the proper way to discharge our . . . responsibilities.”

He was joined by one other justice, Antonin Scalia, in saying the court should agree to postpone the weddings until the justices hear the same-sex-marriage case in April and rule by the end of their term in June.

Do we need any more "signal[s] of the Court’s intended resolution of that question"?

"In some ways, Hagel was the President’s Republican doppelgänger: skeptical of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan..."

"... eager to bring home U.S. troops, and reluctant to get the United States embroiled militarily elsewhere in the Middle East," writes John Cassidy in The New Yorker.

If the primary goal was to complete Obama’s agenda of disengaging from Iraq and Afghanistan, then having Hagel at the Pentagon seemed to make sense. In the past year or so, though, the policy of disengagement has been superseded.... There is no suggestion that Hagel opposed either of these policy changes. Indeed, he was one of the first senior U.S. officials to warn that ISIS represented a serious danger to American interests, which was said to have irked Obama’s aides at the time...

... President Obama appears to have decided that, with the U.S. stepping up its military involvement in various parts of the world, he needed a more hands-on, and on-message, figure at the Pentagon. That’s understandable. But so is the widespread skepticism about the official version of Hagel’s departure, including Republicans’ eagerness to make hay of it. “Secretary Hagel did not believe that the foreign policy is working or is going to work,” Republican congressman Peter King, of New York, told CNN.

That statement reeks of overstatement, which is typical of King. But it underscores that Obama, having just enjoyed his best few weeks as President in a long time, has just refocussed attention on an area, foreign policy, where his enemies sense vulnerability.

"His enemies"? That confused me. I'm pretty sure what Cassidy means by "his enemies" is Republicans. But he was just talking about ISIS, an actual military enemy. That shift in focus was abrupt and telling, especially following the acknowledgment that Hagel had been useful because he was a Republican.

By the way, the picture at the link is just perfect.

"A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly..."

"... in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees."

Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

"Iran is not your ally. Iran is not your friend. Iran is your enemy. It's not your partner. Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel."

Said Benjamin Netanyahu on "Face the Nation" this morning.

"This is not a friend, neither in the battle against ISIS nor in the great effort that should be made to deprive him of the capacity to make nuclear weapons. Don't fall for Iran's ruse, they are not your friend," Netanyahu said.

Over on "Meet the Press" this morning, Chris Matthews was going on about how Obama needed to meet with John Boehner and really pressure him, ask him — "in public... on television" — "What is your opposition to this immigration bill? Is it we don't have enough enforcement? I'll give you more enforcement. Is it hiring rules? We're going to enforce them. I promise you we're going to enforce them. What do you want? So you're absolutely against any kind of amnesty for people who have been here 20, 30 years, absolutely against it? So what then when the president issues the executive order, people will understand he really tried to negotiate. Let me tell you something, we're negotiating with Tehran right now. We're desperately trying to cut a deal over nuclear weapons to the last moment. Why don't we have negotiations going on right now between the two sides?"

Chuck Todd brings him up short:  "You know... I can hear Republicans now echoing, he'll negotiate with the Iranians, he won't negotiate with us on immigration."

Matthews (clearly upset): "That's not the way I said it."

Todd: "No, I'm telling you how you're going to get requoted.... that's how he's going to get requoted."

Matthews: "But they want to negotiate though, Chuck." They, that is, Iran.

Now, go back to the top and read what Netanyahu said.

Get the transcript. What did Obama say about the elections of 2014?

Here's the transcript. (Video too if you've got the patience.) Man, it's long! I'm reading the whole thing, but what you see below are excerpts with my immediate reactions:

Obviously, Republicans had a good night. And they deserve credit for running good campaigns....

Obama is in his element in campaign mode, and so he understands what happened in terms of the capacity to campaign.

Beyond that, I’ll leave it to all of you and the professional pundits to pick through yesterday’s results. What stands out to me, though, is that the American people sent a message, one that they’ve sent for several elections now. They expect the people they elect to work as hard as they do. They expect us to focus on their ambitions and not ours. They want us to get the job done. All of us in both parties have a responsibility to address that sentiment....

What job? Nothing is preferable to the wrong thing. Who believes that we want government to do something, anything?

... So, the fact is, I still believe in what I said when I was first elected six years ago last night. All the maps plastered across our TV screens today and for all the cynics who say otherwise, I continue to believe we are simply more than just a collection of red and blue states. We are the United States. 

Yeah, and then he said "I won" and rammed through his own party's agenda, without even the support of a majority of us voters.

We can and we will make progress if we do it together.

I'm uneasy at the word "progress." It assumes the existence of a road and knowledge of where it leads. I see no reason to believe in President Obama's idea of "progress." America rejected it yesterday.

Wait. I was wrong. I'm not reading the whole thing. The questions and answers go on forever, and I've got a life to live.

ADDED: Before the election, Obama said his policies were on the ballot. Which policies? And why won't he acknowledge that those policies were rejected? Because he was bullshitting when he said the polities were on the ballot? If his people had won, he'd have claimed we endorsed those policies, that he had a mandate. So when the reverse happens, how can he evade the reverse meaning?

Obama "doesn’t feel repudiated."

The spin from the White House.

"We'll find out who really is the party of no."

On "Fox News Sunday" today, Chris Wallace said to Mitt Romney, "you keep talking about breaking the gridlock — yes, a Republican Congress, House and Senate, will pass bills, but will they pass bills that the president will sign?

And Romney said:

Well, that's, of course, the test. And the good news is in many cases the president will sign them, [with] regards to, for instance, the economy, the president has asked for trade promotion authority. Harry Reid won't give him that authority. Republicans want him to have that authority.... With regards to health care, for instance, when Reince Priebus talks about adjusting our health care system to make ObamaCare work better....

And so, these kinds of changes I think you'll actually see the president sign. I'm absolutely convinced that you're going to see with a Republican-led Senate, if we're lucky enough to get that, you're going to see bills get to the president's desk, he will sign some. Some, he won't sign. No question about that, he'll veto some, but I think at that point, we'll find out who really is the party of no. 

"Republicans enter the final week of the midterm campaign holding higher ground than the Democrats..."

"... aided by public dissatisfaction with President Obama’s leadership, with the overall direction of the country and with the federal government’s ability to deal with major problems, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll."

Driving attitudes is a pervasive sense of a country in trouble. Overwhelming majorities say the country is badly off-track and give the economy negative ratings. Economic expectations are little better today than they were at this time four years ago.

"Years of disappointment and tension between Democrats and their president are now on open display as politicians..."

"... party leaders and strategists worried about their chances in the midterm elections begin casting about for someone to blame."

The NYT editorial gives Obama something like his share of criticism for dragging America into another war.

Given the circumstances of this dramatic new war, it's hard to read "Wrong Turn on Syria: No Convincing Plan" as the equivalent of what they'd have thrown at George Bush if he'd done the same, but the criticism is substantial. There's no mention of Bush, by the way. No worse-than-Bush talk.

President Obama has put America at the center of a widening war by expanding into Syria airstrikes against the Islamic State, the Sunni extremist group known as ISIS and ISIL. He has done this without allowing the public debate that needs to take place before this nation enters another costly and potentially lengthy conflict in the Middle East.... How are Americans to know whether they have the information to make any judgment on the wisdom of his actions?...  In the absence of public understanding or discussion and a coherent plan, the strikes in Syria were a bad decision.

How do we know there is no plan or that the decision is "bad" if we're deprived of information? The premise must be that the President can never determine that a sudden, secret attack is necessary to protect America. The NYT seems to be saying the decision is "bad" because Congress and the rest of us Americans were left out of the loop.

I'm not convinced. It's possible that what Obama knew about Khorasan justified obliterating them with a sneak attack — that we just got saved from another 9/11. It's hard for a President to get credit for what doesn't happen. Rightly so. If it were easy to get credit, Presidents would resort to tricking us with claims of credit, "1984"-style.

... The White House claims that Mr. Obama has all the authority he needs under the 2001 law approving the use of force in Afghanistan and the 2002 law permitting the use of force in Iraq, but he does not.

He also claims power as Commander in Chief.

The administration also claims that the airstrikes are legal under international law because they were done in defense of Iraq. In a Sept. 20 letter to the United Nations, Iraq complained that the Islamic State was attacking its territory and said American assistance was needed to repel the threat. But the United Nations Security Council should vote on the issue.

Here's where a mention of George Bush would be particularly apt. Back to the NYT:

Meanwhile, Congress has utterly failed in its constitutional responsibilities. It has left Washington and gone into campaign fund-raising mode, shamelessly ducking a vote on this critical issue....

The silence means something. Members of Congress were informed. Maybe they understood the value of speed and secrecy here. Investigations can come later, perhaps looking into security successes, rather than, as with Benghazi, failures.

So, even though polls have shown public support for airstrikes in Syria, it may not last. Mr. Obama has said there needs to be a sustained mission against ISIS over an unlimited period; it’s unlikely the Americans would back a prolonged campaign if they don’t fully understand the aims or likelihood of success.

So there is public support, though it's hard to see how we support what we can't understand, including attacks on an enemy with a name we just saw yesterday. The NYT falls back on the problem of sustaining support for a long war. America gets tired of war, we are, inevitably, told. But we sit back and allow war. And we are harshly critical when we see that the President had a chance to preempt an attack and exercised restraint.

It is puzzling that Mr. Obama... kept details about Khorasan secret so the group would not know it was being tracked.

Puzzling... or completely understandable? The news report in the NYT says the aim was to "wipe out the leadership" of Khorasan. If we knew where they were and needed to hit them before they moved, what's the puzzle? The editorial observes that bin Laden was discussed publicly, but how many times over how many years did we have a shot at bin Laden and miss it*?

These incongruities — two enemies now, instead of one — call into question whatever sense of purpose and planning the administration hopes to project. 

Let me guess: Commander in Chief.

______________________________

* On September 10, 2001, the day before the 9/11 attacks, Bill Clinton — on a paid speaking gig before 30 businessmen in Australia — said: "I'm just saying, you know, if I were Osama bin Laden - he's a very smart guy, I've spent a lot of time thinking about him — and I nearly got him once... I nearly got him. And I could have killed him...."