Failed Weinberger/Powell Tests

Caspar Weinberger and Colin Powell

Barack Obama needs to go to Congress and explain how his misguided foray into Syria meets the tests of the Weinberger/Powell Doctrine. Daniel Larison writes at The American Conservative here that America needs to end the latest unnecessary war.

The Post points out the obvious that the war against ISIS isn’t “achieving its aims”:

For now, the U.S. operation in Iraq and Syria is defined mainly by its limitations. The restrictions Mr. Obama has imposed on his commanders are not compatible with the objectives he has asked them to achieve.

The solution to this isn’t that the U.S. should lift these restrictions, as the Post implies elsewhere in the editorial, but that the mission should have very different objectives than it does. Better still, the U.S. should abandon the mission all together. The administration erred in waging this war thus far, and it erred again in waging it illegally, but it does not have to compound that error with further escalation.