President Obama, who invaded Libya in 2011 without even asking for congressional approval, took the occasion on Tuesday — in his final 45 days in office — to lecture Washington about constitutional and democratic conduct of war.

“It is important for us to know what it is we are doing, and to have to explain what we are doing to the public,” Obama said at MacDill Air Force base Tuesday afternoon. Obama in March 2011 announced the U.S. intervention in Libya by radio address, over the weekend, from overseas.