You aren't really the U.S. president until you've ordered an airstrike on somebody, so Barack Obama is certainly president now: two in his first week in office. But now that he has been bloodied, can we talk a little about this expanded war he's planning to fight in Afghanistan?
It's not a question of whether the intelligence on which the attacks were based was accurate. The question is: Do these killings actually serve any useful purpose? And the same question applies to the entire U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Obama may be planning to shut Guantanamo, but the broader concept of a "war on terror" is still alive and well in Washington. Most of the people he has appointed to run his defense and foreign policies believe in it, and there is no sign that he himself questions it. Yet even 15 years ago the notion would have been treated with contempt in every military staff college in the country.