Is this a war or not?

That prospect—an engaged military, a disengaged public—is part of the reason that the name we give this fight matters. Under the War Powers Resolution, the President is required to get congressional approval within sixty days of going to war. (Counterterrorism, by contrast, is something that even local police departments can undertake.) Obama said that, while he would “welcome congressional support for this effort,” formal approval was not necessary: “I have the authority to address the threat.” By way of justification, he and his aides have referred to Article II of the Constitution, which designates him Commander-in-Chief. Like some of their predecessors, they hold that the President has a great deal of leeway to act on his own in matters of “national security,” as Obama put it in a letter to Congress last month, or in “protecting our own people,” as he said on Wednesday. That’s well and good in certain emergencies, but if “national security” is defined too broadly it would follow that the only wars in which Congress has a role are those which somehow don’t pose any danger to Americans.

Then again, with the exception of some Democrats and libertarians in the G.O.P., this Congress has shown little interest in being consulted: after the President’s address, there was some movement toward providing funding for training and the like, but the general attitude seems to be Don’t Ask, Just Tell. Obama has indicated that he will use executive actions as a way around gridlock. There are areas where that maneuver is appropriate; the decision to go to war, the gravest a President can make, is not one of them. And yet Republican leaders who were ready to sue the President over the Obamacare employer mandate seem content to let him deploy troops where he will. They may prefer to avoid the responsibility, leaving them room for Benghazi-style recriminations later, if things go wrong. Obama is making that too easy for them.