We owe a good measure of respect and forbearance to the decisions of those in positions of properly constituted authority. Part of the reason for that is that they may have information unavailable to us. There are also, undeniably, serious responsibilities that flow from the fact  that our country has reserves of power and strength unexampled in human history. But we are as a country, yet again, committed to engagement in armed conflict on presidential authority alone. No declaration of aims, no statement of purpose, no fitting resolution has issued from the Congress of the United States. President Obama, in response to a question in Rio de Janeiro, spoke -- briefly and unsatisfyingly -- to the question of aims and purpose of this latest engagement but, to the extent that he's addressed the question of authorization and its proprieties at all, seems to believe that it's only the United Nations apparatus, and not the prerogatives of the co-equal branches of the American government, to whom he should show comity and respectful regard.