Get a grip, people, leave the president's basic war authority alone:
Congress is rethinking the broad authority it gave the president to wage a war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in light of how President Barack Obama has used the power to target suspected terrorists with lethal drone strikes.
Senior Pentagon officials insisted on Thursday that the law should remain unchanged as the nation remains locked in armed conflict with al-Qaida and its affiliates, a fight that will rage for another decade or two. But Republicans and Democrats fear that they have given the president a blank check for using military force worldwide.
"This authority ... has grown way out of proportions and is no longer applicable to the conditions that prevailed, that motivated the United States Congress to pass the authorization for the use of military force that we did in 2001," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said during a Senate hearing. He told Pentagon officials that "basically you've got carte blanche as to what you are doing throughout the world."
Good grief, it isn't our fault that our jihadi enemies are a stubbornly hateful and murderous bunch that seems able to recruit even after a decade of war.
There are precious few things about our president's policies that I like. Don't get in the way of his killing jihadis when he's at least willing to do that. And no, I don't care where they are. This is a connected world and jihadis in a haven anywhere, no matter how remote (you do recall Afghanistan was the base that sent out the original 9/11 attackers, don't you?), are a threat to our people.
Heck, I'm more interested to know why those who committed the 2012 9/11 attacks on our diplomatic facilities in Benghazi and Cairo aren't fish food by now.
