However, I did do a lot of reading and follow up today of what he said from a variety of sources. If any of the following assertions on my part are incorrect, then please feel free to correct me, I am honest enough to admit my mistakes. With that said, here are my very serious problems with the President unilaterally, at least within this country, allowing our military forces and budget to be drawn into another Middle East hornets' nest:
- I cannot understand how the President was able to militarily attack a sovereign country without the approval and consent of Congress. This Libyan issue has been brewing for a long time, he had plenty of time to properly involve Congress in the action and planning. He did not. Rather than answer to the American people through Congress and the Constitution, he answered the call of the United Nations and the Arab League. This is not the way things are supposed to get done in this country. He answers to us, not foreign organizations.
Consider an excerpt from a New York Times column several years ago:
"Congress, the Constitution and War: The Limits on Presidential Power "
By ADAM COHEN - New York Times, 2007
But the Constitution also gives Congress an array of war powers, including the power to “declare war,” “raise and support armies” and “make rules concerning captures on land and water.” By “declare war,” the Constitution’s framers did not mean merely firing off a starting gun...In giving Congress the power to declare war, the Constitution gives it authority to make decisions about a war’s scope and duration.
The Founders, including James Madison, who is often called “the father of the Constitution,” fully expected Congress to use these powers to rein in the commander in chief. “The Constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it,” Madison cautioned. “It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.”
Very well put, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Monroe. By vesting the question of war in Congress, as Monroe stated, it keeps the country's delicate balance of checks and balances in place. Congress authorizes war, funds war, and determines the scope and duration. None of this happened in this instance of attacking a foreign government. No matter how despicable the actions of this foreign government might be, there is a process to follow and Obama ignored it outright.
- Following up on Alan Cohen's article, he was writing to discredit the very similar actions of Bush and Cheney in Iraq. This is where the big hypocrisy comes in. If these words from the New York Times were appropriate to use against Bush, how are they not appropriate to use against Obama? Where is the moral outrage the liberal portion of the country expressed when Bush attacked Iraq? It appears to have been muted or no-existent as Obama attacks Libya, a country that even the high ranking members of the President's administration admits holds no military, security, or strategic value or threat to the United States.
In fact, you could make the point that since Sadaam Hussein had already killed hundreds of thousands of his own people, including the poison gassing to death of thousands of Kurds in just one day, Bush as as justified going into Iraq militarily as Obama has justified going into Libya to prevent the killing of the rebels. It was pretty clear that Hussein was in the daily business of killing his own people and would have killed many more if Bush had not attacked.
Let me be very clear. I was against the Bush move into Iraq from the very beginning and I am not trying to justify that action now. I am just pointing out that if military intervention in the Middle East is justified to prevent civilian massacres, as Obama has done to justify his Libya actions, then he and anyone else cannot condemn Bush on these grounds.
- Which brings us to another aspect of Obama's logic. If he intervened in Libya to prevent a massacre, why has he not intervened in Darfur, Sudan. According to most sources I have referenced, the Sudanese leader, Omar Al-Bashir, and his henchmen are responsible for over 300,000 deaths and the displacement of about 2.6 million civilians.
This is a humanitarian disaster far larger than Libya and is a disaster the political class and Obama have know about for years. Why has Obama not involved us in this situation, that appears very similar to the Libyan situation: madman ruler massacres his own people. Who gets to decide where the we intervene?
An editorial piece from the Christian Science Monitor tries to answer this question:
A Christian Science Monitor opinion piece echoes this idea, stating that the Obama Doctrine is bad foreign policy because it leaves the U.S. in an open-ended commitment in Libya, while confusing the standards for intervention in foreign countries.
“Under the Obama Doctrine, it appears that the U.S. is committed to putting troops in harm’s way and bearing the heaviest financial costs as long as the coalition of NATO and selected Arab states want U.S. troops,” the piece states. “Simply, by compelling an open-ended commitment under international control and limited tools to resolve the conflict, the Obama Doctrine and the Libyan campaign are not good foreign policy.”
- "Not good foreign policy," that sums it up pretty well. No one has any idea what our foreign policy is. When will the United States take similar action? The President of Yemen has had his snipers gun down dozens, if not hundreds, of protesters. How many does he have to kill before Obama unilaterally commits us to another military action. Do thousands of Yemen civilians have to die, tens of thousands?
The leaders of Bahrain has killed dozens of their civilians. When does his government and country get subjected to U.S. military strikes? Syria has killed dozens of its civilians. When and what is their tipping point? How about Iran? Heck, while we are at it, China has been doing a pretty good job of suppressing freedom and has a horrible human rights record against its own civilians. When do we tell them enough is enough? The policy leaves these questions so open ended that it is no longer a policy or strategy, it is a reflex action.
- If Obama's Libya excursion is in fact a reflex action, then we could be in trouble. Remember Reagan's Middle east reflex action when he went and stationed U.S. ground troops in Lebanon for similar humanitarian reasons in the early 1980s? Hundreds of Marines were killed by one of the earliest Middle East suicide bombers that no one in the Reagan administration foresaw as a problem. The unforeseen problems to this reflex action in Libya are not likely to end much better.
- Apparently the President did not answer even basic questions last night in his report to the American public:
- How long is this likely to last?
- How much is this military action likely to cost?
- How much is the follow up humanitarian effort likely to cost and who will operate and pay for that?
- Does the President understand that many Americans are upset that he appears to be taking his marching orders from the United Nations and the Arab League and not the American system of government? How does he explain that perception or misperception?
- When will the Arab League, who reportedly asked for our intervention, start kicking in money, men, and materials?
- The President says this operation will be turned over to international control. What in the world does that really mean? Who is really in charge, who will be in danger, who will be paying for all of this, etc.
- How does the President explain the disconnect of saying that the military action was only to protect civilians but credible news reports indicate the military action is taking out Libyan infrastructure and military assets nowhere close to the rebels?
- And the biggest question of them all, if the rebels succeed, what are the likely consequences and what is a post Qaddafi regime likely to look like? Is it possible that the replacement government could be a hostile one?
Bottom line: this is a crap shot of a military action and if history holds any clue to its outcome, these Libyan dice are loaded with unforeseen consequences, unforeseen expenses, and unforeseen mistakes.
P.S. While the American political class and government has been busy funding and executing this non-strategic and non-threatening Libyan action, the governments in China, India, South Korea, and dozens of other countries in the world have been going about the business of improving their economies to the detriment of our economy.
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