The evidence is mounting that President Obama is determined to punish Syria for using chemical weapons on its own people.
It seems like he will strike back, irrespective of whether Congress authorizes him to do so.
We addressed this in detail at In the (K)now blog this morning in “Obama seems determined to punish Syria”
The president and his spokesmen have made it clear that they feel Congressional approval is not required. They have the executive authority, they say, to strike with or without authorization from Congress.
This is exactly the point that, over in the U.K., Columnist Glenn Greenwald was making on Sunday.
Obama does not need Congressional authorization to strike at Syria.
In his Sunday column published by The Guardian, Obama, Congress and Syria
the subheadline is:
The president is celebrated for seeking a vote on his latest war even as his aides make clear it has no binding effect
“[W]hat makes the celebratory reaction to [Saturday’s] announcement particularly odd is that the Congressional vote which Obama said he would seek appears, in his mind, to have no binding force at all,” Greenwald writes.
“There is no reason to believe that a Congressional rejection of the war's authorization would constrain Obama in any way, other than perhaps politically. To the contrary, there is substantial evidence for the proposition that the White House sees the vote as purely advisory, i.e., meaningless.”
Greenwald knows a lot more than I do about these events, but he is certainly spot on in this analysis.
Obama hasn’t seemed as decisive, determined and forceful as he did during his address to the nation on Saturday. Let us hope he is right.