Marvin Kalb, author of The Road to War, a study of presidential use of force, agrees that Obama is setting no precedent in asking for congressional authorization. But Kalb is baffled by the way the president has gone about this. Obama is “building a new kind of precedent by first putting the world on notice that he has the authority to attack Syria and an attack is imminent—and then putting this projected attack on hold while he gets Congress to authorize it,” Kalb told National Journal. “He has, with this approach, reduced the power of a president’s word and America’s credibility in the troubled Middle East.” Residents of that volatile region are “scratching their heads” and asking, “What’s he really up to?” Kalb said, adding, “He is absolutely producing problems with respect to Iran.” Even before this, skepticism abounded that Obama meant what he had said about preventing Iran from gaining nuclear capability. “Now, the doubts have multiplied considerably,” Kalb said. No one can be sure how the president will respond to any evidence on Iran. Will he, as he is doing on Syria, ask Congress for authorization to strike Iran? Or will he, as he did in Libya, bypass Congress and act on his own authority?

And when it comes time to strike, how will Obama sell the need to risk American treasure or American lives? No recent president, including this one, has found an effective way to outline the U.S. role as the world’s only superpower when it is unclear if the action is driven by threatened national interests or by humanitarian concerns. With no American interests at stake, the Clinton administration turned a blind eye to genocide in Rwanda in 1994, in which Hutus killed up to a million rival Tutsis and their sympathizers. President Clinton later called his inaction one of his biggest regrets in office. But few at the time believed that American troops should be deployed on a solely humanitarian mission.