Um, Matt Stoller, you don't believe that? Sounds like Kucinich is your man then.

Well, now that came out of right field.

I take issue with Obama's statement as well. It's exactly the kind of thing George Bush would say. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've heard him say "My number one job is to protect the American people" at least twenty times. (On the other hand, as Jon Stewart brilliantly noted, he's declared "his job" to be at least 50 things over the years.) George Bush is also a man who conscientiously appears in the presence of soldiers to the extent that if you went solely by his press conferences, you'd conclude that we live in a military dictatorship. I do not consider these two phenomena to be unrelated.

But aside from that. Really, I assume you're referring to his Constitutional role as commander in chief of the Army and the Navy. I don't like this for a variety of reasons. It's obviously militaristic; we should be kept safe through positive international relations and sheer indispensability. And if that screws up, Congress declares war; they are the ones who keep us safe. Turning the President into the National Defender is an attitude that enables military adventurism, as Abraham Lincoln so eloquently explained:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure... Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us" but he will say to you "be silent; I see it, if you don't."

    The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.

What we have now is an occupation, not a war. I think of an occupation as a form of heavily- armed babysitting.  It ends when the adults come home, not when somebody "wins" or "loses".

It's a difference in framing.  We can't "win" or "lose" an occupation, because the ideas of "winning" or "losing" simply doesn't apply.