"We're actively looking at the various legal angles that would inform a decision."
That is what an anonymous administration official told the Washington Post this week about President Barack Obama's deliberations on whether he will personally involve the United States in another Middle Eastern war by ordering military action in Syria.
But the only law that ultimately matters here is the one Obama swore to preserve, protect and defend: the Constitution of the United States.
As recently as six years ago, Obama exhibited a clear understanding of the power the Constitution does and does not give the president in using military force.
"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation," Obama, then a presidential candidate, told the Boston Globe in Dec. 20, 2007 interview.
Obama, then, could have been channeling James Madison or George Washington. He perfectly expressed the original — and, thus, the correct — meaning of the constitutional language on the use of military force.
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