Thread: Pat Buchanan: A foolish and unconstitutional war

A foolish and unconstitutional war

Posted: March 22, 2011
9:04 am Eastern
© 2011

"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

So said constitutional scholar and Senator Barack Obama in December 2007 – the same man who, this weekend, ordered U.S. air and missile strikes on Libya without any authorization from Congress.

Obama did win the support of Gabon in the Security Council, but failed with Germany. With a phone call to acquitted rapist Jacob Zuma, he got South Africa to sign on, but not Brazil, Russia, India or China. All four abstained.

This is not the world's war. This is Obama's war.

The U.S. Navy fired almost all the cruise missiles that hit Libya as the U.S. Air Force attacked with B-2 bombers, F-15s and F-16s.

"To be clear, this is a U.S.-led operation," said Vice Adm. William Gortney.

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies," said Winston Churchill. Obama is a quick study.

In his Friday ultimatum, he said, "We are not going to use force to go beyond a well-defined goal – specifically, the protection of civilians in Libya."

Why, then, did we strike Tripoli and Moammar Gadhafi's compound?

So many U.S. missiles and bombs have struck Libya that the Arab League is bailing out. League chief Amr Moussa has called an emergency meeting of the 22 Arab states to discuss attacks that have "led to the deaths and injuries of many Libyan civilians." We asked for a no-fly zone, said Moussa, not the "bombardment of civilians."

What caused Obama's about-face from the Pentagon position that imposing a no-fly zone on Libya was an unwise act of war?

According to The New York Times, National Security Council aide Samantha Power, U.N. envoy Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton flipped him. The three sisters feel guilty about us not invading Rwanda when Hutu were butchering Tutsi.

They did not want to be seen as standing by when Gadhafi took Benghazi, which he would have done, ending the war in days, had we not intervened.

While Obama is no longer saying Gadhafi must go, Hillary insists that has to be the outcome. No question who wears the pants here.

As U.S. prestige and power are committed, if Gadhafi survives, he will have defeated Obama and NATO. Hence, we must now finish him and his regime to avert a U.S. humiliation and prevent another Lockerbie.

The Arab League and African Union are denouncing us, but al-Qaida is with us. For eastern Libya provided more than its fair share of jihadists to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq. And jihadists are prominent among the rebels we just rescued.

Yet, even as Obama was announcing U.S. intervention to prevent "unspeakable atrocities," security police of Yemen's President Saleh, using sniper rifles, massacred 45 peaceful protesters and wounded 270. Most of the dead were shot in the head or neck, the work of marksmen.

Had Mahmoud Ahmadinejad done this in Tehran, would U.S. protests have been so muted?

In Bahrain, 2,000 Saudi soldiers and troops from emirates of the Gulf have intervened to save King Khalifa, whose throne was threatened by Shia demonstrators in the Pearl roundabout in Manama. The town square was surrounded, the Shia driven out, the 300-foot Pearl monument destroyed.

This crackdown on Bahrain's Shia has been denounced by Iran and Iraq. Grand Ayatollah Sistani, most revered figure in the Shia world, ordered seminaries shut in protest. This is serious business.

Not only are the Shia dominant in Iran, and in Iraq after the Americans ousted the Sunni-dominated Baathist Party, they are heavily concentrated in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, where the oil deposits are located.

They are a majority in Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based. Shia Hezbollah is now the dominant military and political force in Lebanon.

Riyadh must have regarded the threat to Bahrain a grave one to have so exacerbated the religious divide and raised the specter of sectarian war.

Yet, again, why are we bombing Libya?

Gadhafi did not attack the West. He faced an uprising to dethrone him and rallied his troops to crush it, as any ruthless ruler would have done. We have no vital interest in who wins his civil war.

Indeed, Gadhafi has asked of Obama, "If you found them taking over American cities by force of arms, what would you do?"

Well, when the South fired on Fort Sumter, killing no one, Abraham Lincoln blockaded every Southern port, sent Gen. Sherman to burn Atlanta and pillage Georgia and South Carolina, and Gen. Sheridan to ravage the Shenandoah. He locked up editors and shut down legislatures and fought a four-year war of reconquest that killed 620,000 Americans – a few more than have died in Gadhafi's four-week war.

Good thing we didn't have an "international community" back then.

The Royal Navy would have been bombarding Lincoln's America.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=278065

There have been so many positions on Libya taken by so many different folks in the administration, from State to Defense to Executive, over the past 2-3 weeks that I am a tad confused

March 22, 2011

Libya: Obama's Got Some 'Splainin' to Do

By Bill Wagner
22 Comments

Can anyone please "splain" our Libya policy? There have been so many positions taken by so many different folks in the administration from State to Defense to Executive over the past 2-3 weeks that I am a tad confused. Even the latest version announced with classic stern face, upturned jaw and bellicose language was preposterous if you listened closely to the words.

First of all, what exactly is the Libyan "conflict"? Unlike other protests in the Middle East which have based on an effort to achieve some type of democratic reform, and for the most part have been peaceful assemblies, Libya is best described as an all out civil war among tribes based in different regions. It gets worse. While it has been possible to identify most of the protest leaders and their goals in other countries so we can at least evaluate what might ensue if their demands were adopted, we have no real understanding of who the Libyan "opposition" is other than they are all against Khadafy; and little grasp of what a post Khadafy Libya would look like with these guys in control.

I have no sympathy for Khadafy, but the rough equivalent of the difference between Libya and others could be viewed as the difference between a "million man march" on DC to protest administration policy on voting rights; and armed militia attacks on Arlington and Bethesda. Wouldn't we have the right to defend those cities by all military force available? Extreme analogy I know -- up until the last couple of days, I thought Libya was still a sovereign country -- but you get the point. The rationale used for finally getting the USA involved was to "protect innocent civilians." Does the administration really think the USA voter and the Arab Street is that stupid? It's basically a license to do whatever we want since you could drive a truck through that definition, as in wouldn't dropping a 500 pounder on Khadafy's head qualify? And does it also include air support for the opposition countermove; and if that happens, I wonder how many innocent civilians will be in that crossfire.

And what about squaring the circle that it is unacceptable for Khadafy to shoot at Libyan rebels, but perfectly ok for the regime in Yemen to kill 50 folks who were simply expressing their right to assemble and seemed pretty "innocent" to me; or the deafening silence in the face of what was basically a Saudi invasion of Bahrain. In an embarrassing episode on the Sunday talk shows, the administration trotted out a democratic Senator to make the ridiculous case that the difference between the events was that the Libyan venture had the support of the "international community," while intervening in the others did not. So I guess it's ok to fire the cruise missiles if we are settling old scores on behalf of the Arab League.

Same with the blustery "Khadafy must leave" comment; does "leave" mean making funeral arrangements, or having Khadafy resign quietly and slink off into the sunset; or head off to the Cote d'Azur with a pile of cash and 60 virgins. You can bet that the carrots are being tossed around as often as the bombs. The PR release that Khadafy got out of Dodge to avoid confronting the scary US administration has already been drafted; cheap at $5 billion per word.

It was unfortunate that the National Security Advisor, a military guy, had to defend the rationale and make the ridiculous claim that regime change and targeting Khadafy are not mission goals, also on the Sunday talk shows; but perhaps that was part of the cover to make it appear that the military was the driver; someone from "Obama for president 2012" might have been a better choice. And how long did it take for the Arab League to become shocked/shocked that real bombs were being dropped on real people; ditto for Khadafy to trot out the 50 civilian bodies from the hospital the coalition supposedly destroyed; and the Chinese and Russians to demand an end to the violence and the beginning of trade negotiations.

Make no mistake; I would have taken Khadafy out years ago, so that's not the issue. It's the attitude that we can hide behind some Arab League/French cover, so the administration can be perceived by its left base as not being in the forefront of committing military assets. Even the rationale that we had to demonstrate conviction to support the nascent democratic movements in the Middle East, and Khadafy was the designated dart board, would have been fine; but that would have sounded too much like W and Iraq.

But does anyone really believe that the Arab League is going to supply fighters or B2's; or the French can sustain a no fly zone for more than a long weekend? It's going to be us, and pretending otherwise is insulting to both Arabs and the USA voter. It's more of the "not my job -- if things go south; it's 'their' fault" approach to life that the administration is taking, as with the budget and entitlements. All of this is being driven in part by a perception that 2012 GOP field is so weak that a prevent defense approach to the election will prevail. Granted it also plays into the apparent Presidential default position to deliberate and vote present, but the election is a prime additional factor -- do no overt harm where blame can be leveled, the poll numbers will stay put, and another 4 years is in the bag.

Libya is a rounding error, so this type of decision making is not likely to be disastrous (in spite of the mission creep likelihood that eventually boots on the ground will be needed to complete the mission); but as a template, it bodes really badly if some international incident of substance actually popped up on this administration's watch.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/ ... ainin.html

You can't fight a war on the cheap.

March 22, 2011

Cost of Libyan war could wipe out GOP budget cuts

Rick Moran
10 Comments

This shows how pitifully small the GOP's cuts in the $1.5 trillion deficit are. The Hill: http://thehill.com/news-by-subject/defe ... udget-cuts

U.S. military operations in Libya could wipe out a significant chunk of the budget cuts won by congressional Republicans in recent weeks, defense analysts say.

GOP leaders have trumpeted enacted spending reductions that amount to more than $285 million per day since the beginning of March.

But defense analysts say the Pentagon could be burning through more than $100 million per day in Libya, putting those budget savings at risk.
In separate briefings on Monday, the Defense Department and the White House said they do not yet have a projected price tag for the military action that began on Saturday. Defense officials said they are still "collecting" and analyzing early costs.

With Congress determined to rein in federal spending, the cost of the U.S. intervention is sure to become a top concern on Capitol Hill.

Dick Lugar has already raised the issue as part of the reason he is opposing the intervention in Libya. You can't fight a war on the cheap - not when the weapons systems and deployments are so expensive. http://foreign.senate.gov/press/ranking ... 8af6eaa506 Might this spur Republicans to deepen the cuts and try to make a real dent in the deficit?

Don't hold your breath...

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 ... _wipe.html

Congress is better informed if they watch CNN or Fox than listening to the White House

March 22, 2011

Better late than never: Obama informs Congress of Libya action

Rick Moran
4 Comments

I suppose he could have done it earlier - notify Congress that we're at war with Libya - but in fairness to Obama, he's got kind of a full plate.

He's been so busy making deals to buy more foreign oil (from Brazil) and sabotaging domestic production efforts that he just couldn't be bothered to drop Congress a note on what he has planned - if anything - in Libya. And as far as keeping the American people informed, well there are soccer games to be played with Brazilian youth, parties to attend, speeches to make and...well, you know the drill. Sad to say, our president is not a multi-tasker. In fact, he isn't much of a uni-tasker either but then, what do you expect from someone who has played golf 61 times in a little more than 2 years on the job?

Jake Tapper: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch ... a-war.html

Amidst claims by members of Congress that they were insufficiently consulted, and ensuing White House pushback, President Obama Monday officially notified congressional leaders that at "approximately 3:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, on March 19, 2011, at my direction, U.S. military forces commenced operations to assist an international effort authorized by the United Nations (U.N.) Security Council and undertaken with the support of European allies and Arab partners, to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and address the threat posed to international peace and security by the crisis in Libya."

The notification was part of the president's "efforts to keep the Congress fully informed, consistent with the War Powers Resolution," but given complaints from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and the fact that the war started two days ago, it had the effect of a rather discomforting "While You Were Out..." note.

That about covers it. But are we really surprised that when it comes to the law, Obama is less than eager to take it very seriously?

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 ... ama_i.html

Stratfor On Libya, The West And The Narrative Of Democracy

by Tyler Durden
03/22/2011 11:12 -0400
73 comments

From George Friedman of Stratfor

Libya, The West And The Narrative Of Democracy

Forces from the United States and some European countries have intervened in Libya. Under U.N. authorization, they have imposed a no-fly zone in Libya, meaning they will shoot down any Libyan aircraft that attempts to fly within Libya. In addition, they have conducted attacks against aircraft on the ground, airfields, air defenses and the command, control and communication systems of the Libyan government, and French and U.S. aircraft have struck against Libyan armor and ground forces. There also are reports of European and Egyptian special operations forces deploying in eastern Libya, where the opposition to the government is centered, particularly around the city of Benghazi. In effect, the intervention of this alliance has been against the government of Moammar Gadhafi, and by extension, in favor of his opponents in the east.

The alliance’s full intention is not clear, nor is it clear that the allies are of one mind. The U.N. Security Council resolution clearly authorizes the imposition of a no-fly zone. By extension, this logically authorizes strikes against airfields and related targets. Very broadly, it also defines the mission of the intervention as protecting civilian lives. As such, it does not specifically prohibit the presence of ground forces, though it does clearly state that no “foreign occupation forceâ€

The Myth Of International Consensus on Libya

by Joseph Klein
Posted on March 22 2011 11:00 am

Talking heads such as Andrea Mitchell of NBC News have praised President Obama for his “remarkableâ€