President Biden approved Thursday’s early-morning raid on a three-story building in northwestern Syria after U.S. intelligence concluded that Islamic State chief Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was there and plotting the terrorist group’s comeback.

This was a more-than-sufficient basis for the deadly operation, according to how Biden — and, before him, Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama — interpreted the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which Congress passed days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to broaden the president’s powers to use military force in the Middle East.

Over the years, members of Congress have put forth proposals to update, revise or repeal the 2001 AUMF and a second one, passed in 2002, that authorized the invasion of Iraq. Biden has even expressed his support for putting more of the power to wage war back in Congress’s hands.

But no changes have been made, and two decades later, the Qurayshi raid once more raises questions about Washington’s continued, expansive use of the authorization.

“The U.S. position is really a recipe for endless war,” said Adil Haque, a professor at Rutgers University and the executive editor of Just Security, a national security law blog. “The doctrine really allows for conflict that is endless in time and in space.”

Just 60 words long, the AUMF authorized a U.S. president to go after al-Qaeda, the Taliban and anyone else responsible for the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil “to prevent any future...

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