Take stock of the wars we're fighting

America is at war. What war, exactly, isn't exactly clear.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., tried to get Congress to answer this question this week, as the Senate debated this year's military authorization bill.

Unless the Senate took up his amendment to rescind the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force in Afghanistan and Iraq, he said, he would use every dilatory tactic at his disposal and make everyone's life unhappy for at least the 30 or so hours of floor time that Senate rules permit as the world's greatest deliberative body took up the new defense authorization bill. This is a semi-serious threat, considering that there are hundreds of amendments that senators are demanding votes for.

We don't need to get into the parliamentary maneuvering to recognize that Paul is absolutely right on this issue. The U.S. military is currently fighting wars all over the Muslim world, taking on ISIS and other enemies, on the strength of authorizations Congress passed in 2001 and 2002. That is ancient history: In about a year, the Pentagon will likely deploy soldiers in Afghanistan who were born after the post-9/11 authorization.

The Obama administration tried to use the 9/11 resolution to justify military intervention in Syria. It served a very specific purpose at the time. It was never in anyone's wildest nightmares intended to become a perpetual catch-all justification for carrying on any conflict against any terrorists anywhere in the world, let alone bad-actor regimes.