I'm not saying we don't need this new authorization, but I think it maybe muddies the water having to also take the existing 2001 authorization into account.  I think people are confused by that, and I think confusion is not something we should be accepting as a normal state.  And what I find most confusing is that we've have years and years to craft something better.  The problem, I suppose, is that there exists within the Congress a fight between the we-want-to-be-able-to-do-what-we-want-when-we-want coalition and the blanket-authorizations-are-dangerous group.  We find ourselves out here in the real world engaged in the same kind of division, and feeling like no one's really hearing us.  

Cora Currier at The Intercept:

Speaking at New York University School of Law this afternoon, Harold Koh, the State Department's legal adviser until 2013, said that the Obama administration is currently on shaky legal grounds, tying the airstrikes to a law passed days after 9/11.

Koh said that stretching the law like that is inconsistent with Obama's stated goal of bringing the U.S. off of "perpetual wartime footing." Acting without a new authorization from Congress "doesn't promote the end of the `Forever War,'" Koh said.

Since August, the U.S. and other nations have carried out more than 2,300 airstrikes, according to data released by the U.S. military and compiled by journalist Chris Woods.

The administration currently justifies those airstrikes by invoking self-defense and the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force. Passed one week after the September 11th, 2001 and just 60 words long, that law in broad language gave the White House the power to go after anyone connected to the 9/11 attacks.

Thirteen years on, it is still the main legal backing for the war in Afghanistan and for the targeted killings of alleged Al Qaeda affiliates in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia-though there is now a growing consensus among legal scholars and some members of Congress that the law is being used to justify military action it wasn't originally intended to cover.

It also repeals the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.

Terrific.

"Limited enduring offensive combat".

No troops?  Maybe just a little troops? If there are troops they'll be there for three years?

Can't he do anything with simple sentences?  

This is just an open ended agreement for the president to do whatever he wants and maybe when he actually has a plan it will be helpful but for me it is just another sign of how uncommitted he is to living up to his own rhetoric and promises.  Are we destroying them?  Containing them?  He said we are going to destroy them.

Can tou do that with..."Limited enduring offensive combat"?

"I'm always very concerned when we put troops in harm's way that they have the right leadership, training, equipment and the right rules of engagement to win decisively on the field."

In the case of ISIS, Zinke said he is "reluctant to tie our troops' hands behind their back so they can't win."

"The hard facts are that air operations alone won't degrade or defeat ISIS," Zinke said. "It will take U.S. ground troops in the form of embedded special operations forces to ensure that our air power is effective," Zinke said. "It will take intelligence collections to ensure that we mitigate collateral damage."

"Vietnam veterans said they saw the apparent success of US troops during the first two days of the Persian Gulf War as vindication of what they would have done had they not been required to fight their war with one hand tied behind their back."     "We are allowed to do what we should have been allowed to do then."   January 18, 1991