Obama Can Attack Any Country He Wants With Out Congressional Approval Because He Says So

He's a God-King so he doesn't really owe you an answer but he's a generous one, so here you go. Now shut up.

Perhaps more interesting is a little nugget buried in the letter that implicitly justifies launching this invasion without Congressional authorization:

"Qadhafi’s continued attacks and threats against civilians and civilian populated areas are of grave concern to neighboring Arab nations and, as expressly stated in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, constitute a threat to the region and to international peace and security. His illegitimate use of force not only is causing the deaths of substantial numbers of civilians among his own people, but also is forcing many others to flee to neighboring countries, thereby destabilizing the peace and security of the region. Left unaddressed, the growing instability in Libya could ignite wider instability in the Middle East, with dangerous consequences to the national security interests of the United States."

Note the mention of the “consequences to the national security interests of the United States.” Some Dems are arguing that Obama needs Congressional authorization under the War Powers Resolution, which only allows the President to initiate military action without Congress if America is under attack or under serious threat.

This whole idea that there are US national interests involved here is simply argument by assertion. Obama keeps saying there are national interests involved but he never quite gets around to naming them.

If the danger of instability in the Mideast is a casus belli that doesn't require congressional approval for going to war, then every President since Truman had an open invitation to wage war there

In a different post, WaPo lefty Greg Sargent is really excited that Obama took a swipe at Bush while in Chile.

Crucially, Obama also took a tacit shot at Bush, comparing his own multilateral approach favorably to the former president’s:

“In the past there have been times when the United States acted unilaterally or did not have full international support, and as a consequence typically it was the United States military that ended up bearing the entire burden.”

Again, this is simply argument by assertion. When did Bush act unilaterally? When he had far more nations supporting the US in Iraq and Afghanistan than Obama does in Libya? (here's an unofficial list. I can't find an official one. You'd think they be touting that)

And this awesome coalition? Yeah, it's falling apart 3 days in.

Norway and Italy said their participation in air operations over Libya depends on settling who will command the operation, as members of the coalition split over what role to assign to NATO.

The U.K. and Italy want the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to take over the leadership of military operations in Libya, a step resisted by France. Norway is demanding clarity. The U.S., which is now running the missions, says it will turn over the command role in days.

Turning things over to NATO is going to be a bit tricky because our, um, NATO allies, in Turkey are blocking it.

The United Nations should be the umbrella for a solely humanitarian operation in Libya, NATO member Turkey's prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, said on Tuesday, staking out opposition to international military intervention.

Turkey has said it is unable to agree to NATO taking over enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya if the scope of the operation goes beyond what the United Nations sanctioned.

"Turkey will never ever be a party pointing weapons at the Libyan people," Erdogan said in a speech to deputies of his ruling AK Party in parliament.

(Turkey may be coming around but France is opposed to NATO command).

Oh and those "Arab" jets we were told would be flying the Libyan skies? Not so much.

The United Arab Emirates was prepared to deploy 24 aircraft to help enforce a no-fly zone over Libya but decided not to participate in the allied effort because of U.S. and European policies towards Bahrain, the former commander-in-chief of the U.A.E. Air Force said Tuesday.

"The U.A.E. was willing, and there were preparations, to deploy a significant number of aircraft for the no-fly zone, but a reprioritization--specifically the European and U.S. positions on Bahrain--did not satisfy the Gulf states to this end," said Maj. General Khalid Al Buainnain. Speaking on the sidelines of an Abu Dhabi conference, he said the U.A.E. had been prepared to deploy two squadrons of 12 aircraft each to Libya.

Qatar is still sending fighters (2 whole jets!) but that's not much of an upgrade on Bush's Iraq coalition since Qatar is the home to the forward deployed part of US Central Command is essentially where we ran the invasion of Iraq from.

I don't think we need to make this a Bush v. Obama thing but if lefties like Obama and his lapdogs in the MBM like Sargent are gong to make crap up, we need to call them on it.

*I took out a couple of lines about Sargent's opinion on the War Powers Act. I meant to remove them from the draft post prior to posting this but accidentally hit publish first.

posted by DrewM. at 11:18 AM

| Access Comments