PAUL RAHE: Is Obama a War Criminal? “Is killing people via bombing strikes a war crime if it serves no larger strategic purpose, if it is a feckless act apt only to enrage against us those Sunnis who desperately fear the Shia, if it is a cynical maneuver aimed solely at improving the President’s standing in the polls? It is, after all, one thing to seek victory and another to engage in aimless mayhem.”

Plus: “The war in Iraq and Syria really is a war of Barack Obama’s making. Had he kept a body of troops in Iraq to encourage Maliki to honor the arrangements he had worked out with the Kurds and the Sunni, Al Q’aeda in an even more malevolent form would not have made a comeback. Had he vigorously backed the secular reformers in Syria, Bashar al-Assad would have been ousted some time ago, and ISIS would never have secured a foothold. His fecklessness in the past is now, however, going to be compounded by his fecklessness in the present.”