Farce Force Libya
Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links
Excerpt:
In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya".
Mr al-Hasidi insisted his fighters "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists," but added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader".
His revelations came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad's president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, "including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries".
Antiwar Senator, War-Powers President
Excerpt:
President Barack Obama has again flip-flopped on national security—and we can all be grateful. Having kept Guantanamo Bay open, resumed military commission trials for terrorists, and expanded the use of drones, the president has now ordered the U.S. military into action without Congress's blessing.
Imagine the uproar if President Bush had unilaterally launched air attacks against Libya's Moammar Gadhafi. But since it's Mr. Obama's finger on the trigger, Democratic leaders in Congress have kept quiet—demonstrating that their opposition to presidential power during the Bush years was political, not principled.
The Speech Obama Hasn't Given - What are we doing in Libya? Americans deserve an explanation.
Excerpts:
It all seems rather mad, doesn't it? The decision to become involved militarily in the Libyan civil war couldn't take place within a less hospitable context. The U.S. is reeling from spending and deficits, we're already in two wars, our military has been stretched to the limit, we're restive at home, and no one, really, sees President Obama as the kind of leader you'd follow over the top. "This way, men!" "No, I think I'll stay in my trench." People didn't hire him to start battles but to end them. They didn't expect him to open new fronts. Did he not know this?
He has no happy experience as a rallier of public opinion and a leader of great endeavors; the central initiative of his presidency, the one that gave shape to his leadership, health care, is still unpopular and the cause of continued agitation. When he devoted his entire first year to it, he seemed off point and out of touch. This was followed by the BP oil spill, which made him look snakebit. Now he seems incompetent and out of his depth in foreign and military affairs. He is more observed than followed, or perhaps I should say you follow him with your eyes and not your heart. So it's funny he'd feel free to launch and lead a war, which is what this confused and uncertain military action may become.
...
Which gets me to Mr. Obama's speech, the one he hasn't given. I cannot for the life of me see how an American president can launch a serious military action without a full and formal national address in which he explains to the American people why he is doing what he is doing, why it is right, and why it is very much in the national interest. He referred to his aims in parts of speeches and appearances when he was in South America, but now he's home. More is needed, more is warranted, and more is deserved. He has to sit at that big desk and explain his thinking, put forward the facts as he sees them, and try to garner public support. He has to make a case for his own actions. It's what presidents do! And this is particularly important now, because there are reasons to fear the current involvement will either escalate and produce a lengthy conflict or collapse and produce humiliation.
Comment: Incompetent in foreign policy!
George Will's comments:
ReplyDeleteIs it America's duty to intervene wherever regime change is needed?
Explaining his decision to wage war, Obama said Gaddafi has "lost the confidence of his own people and the legitimacy to lead." Such meretricious boilerplate seems designed to anesthetize thought. When did Gaddafi lose his people's confidence? When did he have legitimacy? American doctrine - check the Declaration of Independence - is that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. So there are always many illegitimate governments. When is it America's duty to scrub away these blemishes on the planet? Is there a limiting principle of humanitarian interventionism? If so, would Obama take a stab at stating it?
Congress's power to declare war resembles a muscle that has atrophied from long abstention from proper exercise. This power was last exercised on June 5, 1942 (against Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary), almost 69 years, and many wars, ago. It thus may seem quaint, and certainly is quixotic, for Indiana's Richard Lugar - ranking Republican on, and former chairman of, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - to say, correctly, that Congress should debate and vote on this.
There are those who think that if the United Nations gives the United States permission to wage war, the Constitution becomes irrelevant. Let us find out who in Congress supports this proposition, which should be resoundingly refuted, particularly by Republicans currently insisting that government, and especially the executive, should be on a short constitutional leash. If all Republican presidential aspirants are supine in the face of unfettered presidential war-making and humanitarian interventionism, the Republican field is radically insufficient.
On Dec. 29, 1962, in Miami's Orange Bowl, President John Kennedy, who ordered the Bay of Pigs invasion, addressed a rally of survivors and supporters of that exercise in regime change. Presented with the invasion brigade's flag, Kennedy vowed, "I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana." Eleven months later, on Nov. 2, 1963, his administration was complicit in another attempt at violent regime change - the coup against, and murder of, South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem. The Saigon regime was indeed changed, so perhaps this episode counts as a success, even if Saigon is now Ho Chi Minh City.
Cal Thomas on:
ReplyDeleteWar Number Three
What is this president's foreign policy? Does he have one other than pressuring Israel not to build more "settlements"? A "no-fly zone" will not depose Gadhafi and his sons. They must be overthrown, but that is not our announced objective. Does the president seriously believe a Gadhafi-free Libya will suddenly embrace Jeffersonian democracy? If so, he is a bigger amateur on the world stage than some suspect.
President Obama says, "humanitarian reasons" are a motivating factor for using American and allied forces to topple Gadhafi. What makes Gadhafi worthy of special humanitarian concerns when many other governments similarly oppress their people?
Gadhafi can't live forever. The actuarial table will soon catch up with him. What's the rush, especially if a power vacuum is created in Libya that terrorist groups are all too happy to fill, as they might do in Egypt and other countries in the region that are now experiencing revolutions? Former Ambassador Aujali strongly doubts that will happen, but no one can be certain.
If Iraq qualified as a "dumb war" in Obama's mind back in 2002, what is smart about starting a third war against Moammar Gadhafi today? Is the United Nations, rather than Congress, now the authority for such action? That's what Democrats asked when President Bush was in the White House. It remains a valid question under President Obama.