Today’s Headlines and Commentary

Happy Labor Day to all. The world's not taking a news break, so neither are we.
This morning, the Associated Press cites a U.N. official who says that 5 million Syrians have been displaced by the civil war, and another 2 million have fled the country. Reuters reports  that Syrian U.N. envoy Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari has written a letter asking the U.N. to stop U.S. aggression in Syria.
President Obama “stunned the world” on Saturday by putting brakes on that aggression, announcing that he would seek congressional authorization for use of military force. In his statement, President Obama echoed many of the points made by Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday, acknowledging that Americans are "weary of war," framing the Syrian crisis as a U.S. national security issue and appealing to international conscience, particularly in the face of U.N. paralysis:

Here's my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? What's the purpose of the international system that we've built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world's people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?

The sea of commentary on weekend developments in Syria is vast. As Jack noted, Charli Carpenter has a piece in Foreign Policy imploring critics on both sides not to go the way of the Brits in framing the coming strike as a "humanitarian intervention"---she insists the "responsibility to protect" (R2P) doctrine doesn't apply. Per Jack's recommendation, check out FP's whole lineup on Syria, courtesy of Phillp Bobbitt, Daniel Byman, Norm Ornstein and others.
Let's wade through the rest.
Support:
Over at the New Yorker, Amy Davidson calls going to Congress "the first sensible step" that the President has taken on Syria. Here is the Washington Post on Kerry's (legacy-making?) role in defending the move; here is the New York Times on the Obama's administration's full-throttle campaign for congressional approval.
Criticism:
In a New York Times op-ed, Vali Nasr writes that "waiting for lawmakers to return from their summer recess to respond to an international crisis sends the wrong message to the world." Lis Sly and Ahmed Ramadan of the Washington Post report that Bashar al-Assad's opponents are condemning the U.S. government for weakness, while Peter Beaumont of the Guardian details the intense disappointment inside the Zaatari refuge camp in Jordan.
Consequences:
David Rothkopf of FP lays out five potential consequences of Obama's "profound and momentous" decision to secure congressional approval. A series of stories suggest that it will be a hard sale. Most seem to center on remarks made by Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.). The LA Times quotes him saying that "[t]he administration better make a whale of a case" for the vote to succeed---Cole himself is currently "leaning no," reports the Post. But President Obama reserves the right to strike in Syria if, awkwardly, Congress votes down the proposed authorization, write Spencer Ackerman and Nicholas Watt in the Guardian.