The lead story in today’s Washington Post reports on internal debate in the Obama administration on whether to use military action against a Somali extremist group that has ties to al-Qaeda and that poses “a potential terrorist threat to U.S. interests.” This passage in particular caught my eye:

The new administration is still defining its rationale for undertaking sensitive operations in countries where the United States is not at war.
Some in the Defense Department have been frustrated by what they see as a failure to act. Many other national security officials say an ill-considered strike would have negative diplomatic and political consequences far beyond the Horn of Africa.

Just wait to see what happens if Harold Koh is confirmed as State Department legal adviser. Koh has been an ardent opponent of presidential uses of military force without congressional authorization and occupies the far end of the spectrum in his opposition to presidential authority. He’s dogged in his views and won’t walk away from them as State Department legal adviser. Instead, he’ll bully those who disagree with him and claim that they’re advocating illegal policies that would make them war criminals.

If DOD officials are frustrated now, things will get much worse with Koh. And if the prudential objections that “other national security officials” invoke against “an ill-considered strike” are genuine, those officials will have equal cause to be exasperated with Koh when he invokes his own legal views to thwart well-considered strikes.

Koh will present similar problems for the Obama administration on responsible policies on detainees and national-security matters generally. All of this helps explain why (as I’m reliably told) some senior political appointees were worried by Obama’s nomination of Koh — and why they’d be relieved by the collapse of his nomination.