As President, Barack Obama has shown the occasional capacity to recognize good policies when he sees them. As a candidate for president, Mr. Obama continuously condemned George W. Bush for the Guantanamo Bay enemy combatant facility, for enhanced interrogation techniques, rendition, black site interrogation facilities, virtually everything else the nation was doing in the “War on Terror,” and also for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That technique played well with voters and helped him win the election. But as president he learned that things look different from inside the Oval Office than from outside on the campaign trail, and...
