Since when does the UN authorize the US to go to war?

Andrew C. McCarthy says Go to Congress first before warring against Libya.

Our Constitution vests Congress with the power to declare war. That authority cannot be delegated to an international tribunal that lacks political accountability to the American people. The decision to go to war is the most significant one a body politic can make. Thus the Framers designed our system to make certain that the responsible officials are answerable to the people whose lives are at stake and who are expected to foot the bills.

and concludes

But there should be no debating that absent a hostile invasion of our country, a forcible attack against our interests, or a clear threat against us so imminent that Americans may be harmed unless prompt action is taken, the United States should not launch combat operations without congressional approval.

But James V. Capua in Obama and the Libya decision has a different take.

Now at first glance it might appear he is merely being cautious – limiting our exposure to minimize any unfortunate foreign or domestic fallout should the television images get unpleasant, but one cannot help but suspect that the motive is less to minimize the US role than it is to exalt that of the UN and other supra-national organizations, such as the Arab League, and all of the NGO camp followers that normally feed off such international coalitions.

Additionally, this action promises finally to use American military power in the kind of international relief and social service agency capacity Obama’s internationalist foreign policy team would like it to be, its mission unsullied by grubby considerations of national interest. One observer has already compared it to the international intervention in Kosovo, intervention that delivered the Kosovars into the hands of UN and EU caretakers, despite their declaration of independence.

[..]

Even more significantly Obama’s world view requires victims to be serviced, and not winners to be supported. As long as the Libyan rebels had a chance to prevail, they were of little value to a messianic narcissist bent on removing the “Incomplete” from his Nobel Peace Prize citation. Pitiful, battered, pleading Libyans huddled around Benghazi are the prerequisite for making this this intervention work politically. In just the same way Obama and Pelosi needed the image of sick, desperate, hard up Americans to make the case for ObamaCare, the Stimuli, and financial services “reform.”

[..]

War without victory, intervention that produces dependency, Americans shouldering the burdens but obscured in a fog of UN acronyms, a maze of rules of engagement and process that squeezes every last bit of spirit and motivation out of warriors, it may not be a strategy, but it sure as hell explains the motivation.

I rarely agree with this view of the U.S., but now I do in the case of the U.S. beginning a third war in the Middle East and the disaster that will follow. However, I do not agree though that Rep. King’s congressional hearings are a ‘witchhunt’ since he is trying to protect us here in the U.S.

Libya: Another quagmire beckons.

In the short space of a decade, the U.S. has made war in three Muslim nations, and Canada in two. For many Muslims, any just cause for these conflicts is beside the point. Shoddy affairs like Rep. Peter King (R-NY)’s congressional witchhunt on Muslims are easily enough overlooked in Karachi and Jakarta. But Western military attacks on sovereign Muslim nations can’t help but appear to many of the world’s estimated 1.2 billion to 1.6 billion Muslims - or about 20% of the world population - as a determined assault on the Muslim world.

http://thestar.blogs.com/davidolive/2011/03/libya-another-quagmire-beckons.html

This is IMO another assault on American sovereignty. Another Leftist sleight of hand move to set Leftist precedence shifting more undeniable authority to the United Nations.

I think you've analyzed this dog's breakfast perfectly.

This was a called play, a setup.

Obama knew he was going to pull this for months, as soon as the Arab world started to present a host of phat targets for his policy coup.

The House of Representatives needs to impeach him right this minute, and put the Senate on the hot seat on this issue. After all, it's the Senate's constitutional duties and prerogatives that Obama is invading as much as, or more than, anyone's -- what ever happened to "advise and consent"?

We know what the 'Rat senators would do in an impeachment trial -- but it would sure clarify the issues for a ton of "Reagan Democrats" in time for 2012.

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