Re: Obama Goes to War

As loathe as I am to defend Obama, I'm not so sure it as clear cut as that.  

Congress has the power to declare war but, arguably, the president as the 
commander in chief has the power to make war, and that is more than just a 
semantic difference.  Congress's response to the president committing troops 
where it doesn't want them committed is to refuse to appropriate funds for the 
effort.  


Exactly what is supposed to happen in order for a president to take military 
action isn't spelled out in the constitution, so to say Obama has acted 
unconstitutionally is more of a political statement than a legal one.

Mike F.  






________________________________
From: Peter Chattaway <[email protected]>
To: Daniel Amos off-topic listserver <[email protected]>
Sent: Tue, March 29, 2011 3:39:42 PM
Subject: [DADL-OT] Obama Goes to War

FWIW, I tend not to re-post Patrick Buchanan articles here, but this one made 
some interesting arguments:

- - -

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2011/03/28/obama-goes-to-war/

Patrick J. Buchanan
March 28th, 2011

In ordering air and naval strikes on a country that neither threatened nor 
attacked the United States, did President Obama commit an impeachable act?

So it would seem. For the framers of the Constitution were precise. The power to 
declare war is entrusted solely to Congress.

From King William’s War to Queen Anne’s War to King George’s War to the Seven 
Years’ War, the colonists had had their fill of royal wars. To no principle were 
they more committed than that the power to declare war must be separate from the 
power to wage it.

And Obama usurped that power.

His defenders argue that under the War Powers Act he can wage war for 60 days 
before going to Congress. But that applies only if the president is responding 
to an attack or has determined that the nation is under imminent threat.

Had JFK ordered air strikes on the Cuban missile sites, he would have been 
responding to an imminent and potentially mortal threat.

When Ronald Reagan ordered the liberation of Grenada after Marxist thugs 
murdered the president and 500 American medical students there seemed in danger 
of being taken hostage, he acted within the War Powers Act. Some 100,000 AK-47 
automatic rifles were found stockpiled on the island.

Reagan again acted within the spirit and letter of the act when he used the New 
Jersey and carrier-based air to retaliate against the terrorist camps of those 
who engineered the massacre of the 241 Marines in Beirut and when he retaliated 
against Libya and Moammar Gadhafi for the attack on U.S. soldiers at the Berlin 
discotheque.

But before George H.W. Bush went to war to liberate Kuwait and George W. Bush 
took us to war against Iraq, each went to Congress and got roll-call votes 
authorizing those wars.

Obama worked the phones to get the approval of 10 of 15 members of the Security 
Council, but not Russia, China, Germany, India or Brazil. He then sought the 
benediction of the Arab League, which reveals much about where Obama thinks real 
moral authority in this world resides.

The president described his reasoning: “(W)hen innocent people are being 
brutalized; when someone like Gadhafi threatens a bloodbath that could 
destabilize an entire region; and when the international community is prepared 
to come together to save many thousands of lives — then it’s in our national 
interest to act. And it’s our responsibility.”

But if Obama’s U.N. mandate was to “protect civilians” in besieged Benghazi, why 
did we put a Tomahawk cruise missile down the chimney of Gadhafi’s compound, 600 
miles away?

Saturday, Ajdabiya fell to the rebels after U.S. planes pulverized its 
defenders. If civilians were in danger in Ajdabiya, it was because of a rebel 
attack that could not have been mounted had U.S. planes not conducted air 
strikes on tanks and troops defending the town.

What civilians were we protecting in Ajdabiya — or Brega and Ras Lanuf, all of 
which fell over the weekend?

A time for truth. U.S. intervention prevented Gadhafi victories in a campaign to 
crush an insurgency. We have since destroyed his air force and smashed his armor 
and decimated his ground forces to demoralize and cripple his army until its 
officers realize they cannot survive weeks of U.S. bombing — and they move to 
remove or kill him.

America is fighting the rebels’ war.

So the questions arise that were never answered when Obama ignored Congress to 
start his war. Who are these rebels, some of whom belong to al-Qaida, as others 
show their hatred of Gadhafi by smearing his posters with a Star of David?

When we win the rebels’ war for them, whom do we put in power? Who is our Hamid 
Karzai?

What allied troops come to occupy Libya?

Many NATO nations have spotty records there. The Turks ruled it in Ottoman days. 
Benito Mussolini held it for 20 years. Gen. Erwin Rommel, a Hitler favorite, 
used it for his desert campaign against the British.

What credibility will our Libyan proteges have when all in Libya know they hold 
office because Americans came and killed their army?

How many troops will it take to police the smashed cities and prevent reprisals? 
Who provides those troops? If a Battle of Algiers war begins, as happened in 
Iraq and Afghanistan and are still going on, who fights that war? And if a 
regime’s use of violence against protesters justifies a U.S. attack, does Obama 
have carte blanche to attack Syria and Iran?

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman thinks so. As he said in Paris: “The 
same principles, activities, the Western world has taken in Libya … I hope to 
see those regarding the Iranian regime and the Syrian regime.”

Is Libya the dress rehearsal for Syria and Iran?

Neocons could not be giddier. Weekly Standard editor William Kristol is 
ebullient: “Despite his doubts and dithering, President Obama is taking us to 
war in another Muslim country. Good for him.”

Perhaps. But will bloodying another Muslim country be good for America?


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