Last night the United States and the Coalition of the Useless launched the first round of airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria. It was a predominantly American affair but a handful of Arab states tagged along as window dressing:

The attack was carried out using a mixture of warplanes dropping bombs, remotely piloted aircraft and ships firing cruise missiles.

Aircraft from several Arab states took part in the attack. They were: Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to the Defense Department.

Notably absent from the strike packages were aircraft from Britain, France, Germany, or Turkey.

Let’s review the bidding. After destabilizing the region by a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq over the objections of his military and civilian advisers and by encouraging and arming rebels against Syria’s Bashar Assad and waiting for a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions to materialize, Obama has finally acted… albeit without the approval of Congress. And he has acted in a way that is least likely to have any significant impact: airstikes that are not coordinated with a ground offensive against a target that is very low tech and highly mobile.

Predictably, the major media got onboard. For example (hat tip to Ace of Spades’ Gabriel Malor)

This is stunning in its utter boneheadedness. This is distinguished from the Iraq War in a lot of ways. Scope of effort. Effort to build national consensus. Effort to build international consensus. Planning. Purpose. But none of these distinguishing features cuts to Obama’s advantage. If any Republican president had engaged in airstrikes without Congressional approval, you can bet Josh Lederman would not be befouling himself pointing out that not only was the action in seeming violation of the War Powers Resolution but that the coalition he assembled seemed a bit light. But this is the Lightworker doing light work so the laughable effort must be hailed as a seminal event in American history.