In our last installment, President Obama had injudiciously followed up his expression of moral indignation against the Islamic killers of the American journalist James Foley and sympathy for his family with a quick game of golf on Martha’s Vineyard. The contrast between the gruesome photos of poor Mr. Foley’s beheading—by an anonymous Briton subsequently dubbed “Jihadi John” by the British media—and one of the President behind the wheel of his golf cart, caught in the midst of a full-throated laugh, caused even the hitherto subservient media to grumble a bit. The power of these images may also have added impetus to the media’s complaints when, shortly afterwards, a second American, Steven Sotloff, was likewise beheaded, and the President’s reaction again seemed a trifle disproportionate to some, and lacking in the sort of ringing phrases he so often comes up with on matters, like the minimum wage or women’s reproductive rights, that appear to interest him more.

“We know that if we are joined by the international community,” he said at a press conference in Estonia, “we can continue to shrink ISIL’s sphere of influence, its effectiveness, its financing, its military capabilities to the point where it is a manageable problem.” A manageable problem? Did he plan to negotiate them down to cutting off some body part less essential than a head? Maybe he could eventually get them down to fingers and toes. Even when he realized that those who had put him into office to get American forces