Posted on 03/22/2011 5:07:54 AM PDT by shortstop
And so we start another war.
For no reason, with no objective, with no popular support or national interest, at the whim of a president, we start another war.
And sit stunned at another misadventure begun in our name and underwritten with our blood. On the brink of insolvency, our military stretched dangerously thin, we start another fight.
Having capitulated on one, and become mired in another, we start yet a third.
Completely deaf to George Washington’s warning to avoid foreign entanglements.Over the weekend we attacked Libya.
It was supposed to be a UN operation, with us in support, on the far side of the horizon, with refueling and radar and logistical support. But when the rubble started to bounce it was us, from our ships and from the sky, pounding a country that had done us no harm, inflicted no hurt.
In the name of a no-fly zone, we attacked infantry and armor and artillery, in full fight against the Libyan military and police. Young Libyans conscripted into their military, fighting a civil war in defense of their government, fried in their tanks by our men and munitions.
And nobody knows why.
At least not in this country.
There has been no speech to the nation, no causus belli, no building of popular support or resolution of Congress, just the nod of a presidential head and we are again at war.
The peace candidate has become the war president.
And after 40 years, a Libyan dictator has suddenly become intolerable. For 20 years he was the world’s leading funder and bankroller of terrorism. In the 1980s he murdered American servicemen. Some 20 years ago he blew a civilian airliner out of the sky over Scotland.
There were a few sorties and a spanking from Reagan, but the world let him stay and we had no cause for war.
Now all of that has changed.
He has apparently done something worse.
As the wave of uprising spread across the Muslim world, people came out to protest in Libya. And the government suppressed them. Just as governments have done in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Syria and Yemen. The protesters became rebels and mysteriously armed began attacking. The government fought back and got the upper hand and pushed back, reclaiming territory it had controlled for half a century.
And while Saudi tanks rolled into Bahrain the Security Counsel decided that Libyan tanks couldn’t roll into Libya.
And the attack commenced.
We have gone to war with one more Muslim nation.
And in the inscrutable algebra of Obama-Clinton foreign policy, we have selected this one oppressive government – out of all the oppressive governments – and decided to topple it. Untold thousands and millions of black Africans have been uprooted or killed by governments and warring tribes and we have done nothing.
At the very time Libya was fighting armed rebels in a civil war, Ivory Coast was displacing and killing tens of thousands of its citizens. More people being treated worse in Ivory Coast, and yet we sent our armed forces into Libya.
If this is a humanitarian mission, then I don’t fully grasp the meaning of the word “humanitarian.”
And I don’t fully grasp the strategy at play. Tactically, it is clear the president has decided to decimate the Libyan military. But what is the strategic objective?
Has the White House forgotten the “you broke it, you bought it” principle of foreign meddling? Has it been so long since we took down Saddam Hussein that we have forgotten what can happen in the wake of the sacking of a dictator?
Have we not seen the chaotic mess that consumed Iraq? Do we think that any other fate can await a decapitated Libya? There is no organized opposition, no party or personality, just a people who have known nothing of self-government or political organization for almost half a century.
Has no one noticed that in the wake of the Muslim strongman, history has given us the rise of the Islamist? Do we really think that the organizations and leaders of militant Islam are going to hang back and do anything other than leap into the leadership vacuum? In Iran and Iraq, nearly a generation apart, it is the mullahs who have taken over. And it is likely the mullahs who will take over in Egypt and now, possibly, in Libya.
Does the president really think that the world is a safer and more stable place with both Egypt and Libya leaderless at the same time? Does he think that the world’s tenuous economy is bolstered by threats to Mediterranean commerce, African oil and Suez shipping?
And wasn’t Libya the rogue nation that rehabilitated its status by renouncing terrorism and weapons of mass destruction? Haven’t the western nations been its tacit allies for most of the last decade?
Didn’t Libya, wanting our favor, play nice with the world community?
And isn’t there a possibility now that with this war we have unleashed another hornet’s nest of terrorism? If we are going to smash this new enemy with conventional tactics, isn’t it natural to suspect that he will respond with unconventional tactics?
Does the president think that Libya has forgotten how to get bombs on airplanes? Does anyone remember that it was Libya that figured out how to wreak most of the carnage that ripped Northern Ireland for years on end? If the Libyan dictator is a psychotic who doesn’t care for the lives of his own civilians, what regard do you think he has for the lives of our civilians?
And what regard do you think our president has for the will and wishes of our people? There is no groundswell of national anger against Libya, there has been no effort by the administration to either gauge or guide public sentiment. He consulted foreign heads of state, but he did not consult Americans – either on Main Street or in the Capitol.
The people have not been consulted, the Congress has not voted, the president has just acted.
And he has taken us to war.
And like his previous effort in Afghanistan, there is no objective, there is no end game, there is just killing.
Barack Obama rose to prominence as a critic of George W. Bush’s war against Iraq. Unfortunately, he seems to remember none of the points he made then.
Or if he does, he sure isn’t applying them.
We have started another war.
For no good reason.
Freep Mail
The POTUS has just violated the Constitution and the War Powers Act which puts us smack into a military junta standing as a nation. You might worry a little more about that than your lust for revenge.
The only thing Barry has left is his base and now they are turning on him.
I never saw where Obama obtained congressional approval for his war nor where Libya was a threat to the US requiring military response.
Obama is a War Criminal for starting an Illegal War!
This is why you don’t give a man-child the reigns to the military...he doesn’t know when to use it.
I believe the main reason we got into this mess was to help Europe keep Libyan oil flowing to them. So what’s in it for us, or rather, what’s in it for 0bama and his minions? That’s the $64,000 question. This is a REAL Blood for Oil war imo, not the phoney charge they hung on Bush’s neck.
The 17th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified in 1913
State Legislatures, who were expert in the state's business, and who kept day to day tabs on the state's representatives to the Federal government, were the one's who the founding fathers had elect the Senators. This relationship protected the state's interests against the Federal government's interests.
The 17th amendment did away with that working relationship and made 'the people' responsible for keeping tabs on the federal reps also. (But it did not change the length of the senator's terms. Who can keep track of what these guys are doing for 6 years?)
This amendment has resulted in, as the framers predicted, a national government with influence, power and control unchecked by any political mechanism.
The original U.S. Constitution gave state governments a strong voice in the national government by requiring them to select U.S. Senators - to serve much like ambassadors today at the United Nations - and thus created the U.S. Congress to be a political (not judicial) venue for the competition between state government interests and national government interests.
Consider that those in state government claim a responsibility to address questions in the areas of taxation, education, employment, disaster relief, public safety, transportation, health care, marriage, and property rights, to name but a few. Yet all of those issues, and far more, are now primarily mandated, regulated, or directed out of Washington, DC, far away from the people being impacted by those policies. While the state governments bear much of the responsibility for their citizens, they have only secondary authority to do anything about the issues they face. When federal courts decline, as they frequently do, to interpret the 10th Amendment as protecting the sovereignty of states, without a voice in the U.S. Senate the states have no recourse. Repealing the 17th would address this deficiency.
Read more: http://www.restorefederalism.org/?gclid=CK6xks_14qcCFYxd5Qodpi739w
Your logic is mindless.
How about the war right here, right under your nose?
How about the war on the Texas/Mexico border and the thousands being killed?
How about the hundreds of thousands murdered, robbed, raped, wounded, run over, shot, stabbed, and burglarized American victim of this violent invasion of millions of Mexicans invading the U.S.?
What about this epic lawless murder and violence?
A good president would do all of the above.
We did send the army into Mexico to get Pancho Villa.
We did send the military into Panama after Craterface.
We do have the means to protect our borders, we just dont have any leaders with the necessary genitalia to actually do it.
We apparently didnt have any concrete evidence against Qadafi until one of his former ambassadors spilled the beans. That alone should have given us enough reason to go into Libya to get him. Murder of 270 people is a crime without expiration date.......
Then we agree, Bush was just another lousy President.
Well hell, everyone can’t be perfecty like obama. According to his disciples and worshippers, even Jesus and Almighty God fall short when compared to thir messiah. And probably Gore or Kerry would have made a better President.
To imply we can bomb Qadaffi for Pan Am is an implication that tomorrow we can bomb Japan for Pearl Harbor.
That was before we found out that he, personally, ordered the bombing, not just that it was planned and carried out in his country, by some of his agents. That makes him a conspirator in murder. Unless Bush signed a full pardon, that would make him unprosecutable in the US, would it be non casus belli. The UK, Scotland, and any other country that had people on that illfated flight, would have reason enough to prosecute him as well.....
Unfortunately Obama did not get that memo. He says we’re there for another reason.
I think it's stupid to be hitting a hornets nest if you have no will to destroy the hornets when they awaken and are now angry.
Americans tourists will again be sitting ducks on 747s. Thank to this action.
I suspect the ‘reason’ is poll numbers........
With all the uber security nowadays, that is a remote possibility. The coalition seems to be fractured and will fall apart without American leadership, which we have none at the present time......
Having capitulated on one, and become mired in another, we start yet a third.
Whoa right there, Bob. There are a lot of families missing members who were on a certain airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, who would disagree rather heartily with that statement.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.