Obama’s illegal war against Libya

[Karmadillo]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jun2011/pers-j08.shtml

<edit>

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal fired back against Lugar’s constitutional scruples in an editorial Monday that criticized Obama for not going far enough in his defiance of Congress. Obama “has an obligation to defend the powers of his office, as well as to win the wars he begins,” the newspaper wrote. It continued: “The White House can help Members of Congress who understand the necessity of Presidential war powers by declaring forthrightly that Mr. Obama and his legal advisers believe the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional and thus he won't abide by it.”

What the Journal is advocating is, to put it bluntly, a presidential dictatorship, in which the occupant of the White House asserts not only the power to wage war—reserved by the Constitution to Congress—but the authority to determine what laws are constitutional—a power reserved to the federal courts.

Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war. This has a fundamental democratic content: the president, in the US constitutional structure, was the stand-in for the British monarch. It had required a centuries-long struggle, culminating in the English Revolution of 1640-48 and the execution of King Charles I, to put an end to the royal “prerogative” to wage war without the consent of Parliament.

For more than a century and a half, the US government adhered to this constitutional arrangement. But the rise of the United States to the status first of a world power, and then the dominant world power, made it increasingly vital to the interests of the ruling class that the president be able to deploy military forces around the globe, regardless of political restrictions and popular sentiment at home.

more...

[alc]

1. who said anything about a "war" with Libya

It's a "kinetic military action". Pay attention to what Obama says. Words are important and he won't be re-elected if you don't listen.

[pampango]

2. While I support the UN action, Obama needs to follow our laws and constitution.

The necessity to seek congressional approval of our participation in the UN effort should be seen as an opportunity to educate people on the merits of the "responsibility to protect". If that effort fails and congress does not authorize our participation, so be it. Many on the right and left don't trust the UN to make decisions like this anyway.

It is certainly possible that the US will choose to ignore the UN's R2P mandate. That would make interventions like Libya and the Ivory Coast more difficult, but most of the UN's R2P interventions have not had any US participation anyway. Each country should decide whether it will participate in any UN mission based on its own legal frameworks.

[MineralMan]

3. More WSWS bias. No, thank you.

[SidDithers]

4. Unrec for wsws...nt

Sid

[dionysus]

8. vaht? if ve have any more posts.. from tha wsws... shtrike!!

[SidDithers]

10. Vhen you're gettin' schtiffed, ya schtrike!!!...

Can't have a bowl of soup in that time.



:rofl:

Sid

[dionysus]

15. and no vindows! they can have the vindow people do those... i'm tough as... nails...

..that's the kind of guy... i am....

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[SidDithers]

9. Why are you replying to yourself?...nt

Sid

[Karmadillo]

11. Nice try. No rebuttal?

nt

[SidDithers]

12. LOL...

:rofl:

Oh, and what's the point of "nt" when you put it inside the message?

Sid

[Karmadillo]

13. LOL. No rebuttal?

nt

[SidDithers]

14. Nope. Just laughing at wsws...

You really don't understand what "nt" is and means, eh?

Sid

[Karmadillo]

16. Because they can coherently express their ideas? That is funny. No rebuttal?

nt

[SidDithers]

17. Because, like Fox News, they report with an agenda that, IMO...

isn't in line with the principles of DU. You know, "to be generally supportive of progressive ideals, and to support Democratic candidates for political office."

nt :rofl:

Sid

[Karmadillo]

19. That should make your task pretty easy. No rebuttal?

nt

[SidDithers]

20. I've already told you there's no rebuttal...

see post 14. Though, since you replied to it I can't imagine how you didn't understand it.

nt :rofl:

Sid

[Karmadillo]

24. You tried your best. That's what counts.

nt

[SidDithers]

25. Well, I was entertained by your series of posts...

so, that's a good thing.

nt :rofl:

Sid

[Romulox]

6. Libya looks to become yet another unwinnable quagmire. How did we get sucked into a THIRD war?

:wtf:

[Dreamer Tatum]

7. It's not illegal. Obama said so. nt

[amborin]

21. +1

[pampango]

23. May be illegal under US law, not international. "Juan Cole: Top 10 Ways Libya 2011 is not Iraq 2003"

http://www.juancole.com/2011/03/top-ten-ways-that-libya-2011-is-not-iraq-2003.html

1. The action in Libya was authorized by the United Nations Security Council. That in Iraq was not. By the UN Charter, military action after 1945 should either come as self-defense or with UNSC authorization. Most countries in the world are signatories to the charter and bound by its provisions.

2. The Libyan people had risen up and thrown off the Qaddafi regime, with some 80-90 percent of the country having gone out of his hands before he started having tank commanders fire shells into peaceful crowds. It was this vast majority of the Libyan people that demanded the UN no-fly zone. In 2002-3 there was no similar popular movement against Saddam Hussein.

3. There was an ongoing massacre of civilians, and the threat of more such massacres in Benghazi, by the Qaddafi regime, which precipitated the UNSC resolution. Although the Saddam Hussein regime had massacred people in the 1980s and early 1990s, nothing was going on in 2002-2003 that would have required international intervention.

Seven more at the link.

[Igel]

18. The WSJ editorial's a bit muddled.

In other words, you really have to read it close to follow it because it's splitting a number of hairs, all at once, with a small word count.

But the WSWS take on it is just wrong.

The WSJ has a few points.

Congress declares war, not the president. The president can use force--and many have--when the US is under threat of attack and a few other instances. It doesn't defend the initiation of force in Libya. This point is merely stipulated.

The president runs wars, not Congress. The Congress can deny funding (which the WSJ thinks is a bad idea, using as its example the defunding of US treaty obligations in '75 that signaled that we weren't interested in S. Vietnam). But Congress cannot manage a war: It requires too much speed and at least a partial disconnect from political considerations. This is the presidential authority that must be defended; this is the unconstitutional aspect of the WPA, requiring that the president, engaged in military operations, come reporting to Congress when there's no such Constitutional requirement and the imposition of any legal requirement would interfere with the president's powers to conduct war.

I know it's complicated--to separate out the authority to start and the authority to wage wars like the Constitution does so clearly and explicitly, so who can blame the WSWS for being in over their heads. It's also easily possible to disagree with the third point in the editorial, the assertion that for Congress to simply defund a war and thus force its conclusion in an ex parte manner is shameful or harmful to US interests. But having a third point in a single editorial makes the complexity of understanding the WSJ even more difficult. (We require editorials with one clear, black-and-white point, expressed in simple terms and containing no more than 100 words. At 101 the mind fuzzes over. Oh, dear. I've exceeded that limit.)

[EFerrari]

22. The piece is right about Libya and the fascists at the WSJ but

the conclusion is unearned and sort of pushes itself off a cliff.

It's sobering to realize this administration has been more autocratic than BushCo with respect to war powers. The author might have stayed with that instead of slipping social interest and democratic rights into his conclusion because he didn't really argue those points and he's overreaching when he didn't have to, imo.