The New York Times, even in revealing Obama’s personal role in approving strikes, merely presented this as evidence of his credentials as a deep thinker: “A student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas,” the Times asserted, “he believes that he should take moral responsibility for such actions.”

That provides some insight into the sympathetic assumptions from which the media currently operate and how they have nearly got us into a war last week.

New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan asked her paper’s managing editor, Dean Baquet, about whether Times coverage of Syria isn’t ignoring the lessons of Iraq.

His paraphrased reply: “Syria is not another Iraq, he said. One of the major differences, he said, is that the Obama administration has no enthusiasm for this conflict in the way that President George W. Bush’s administration did a decade ago.”