The confusion in response to Obama’s morally justifiable but probably unconstitutional participation in attacks on the Libya government crosses all political ideologies. So what’s the right wing meme of late? Obama is a sissy who was dragged into war by women.
That’s what Rush says.
But I like Frank Gaffney’s approach better.
Needless to say, I hope the Gaddafi Precedent 1.0 will work out better than seems likely to be the case in Libya. Even more importantly, I am praying that Barack Obama and his anti-Israel troika of female advisors will not take us all down a road that seems ripe for another, ominous application of this precedent, with truly horrific repercussions – for Israel, for the United States and for freedom-loving people elsewhere. A Congress that was effectively sidelined by Team Obama in the current crisis had better engage fully, decisively and quickly if it is to head off such a disastrous reprise.
We are of course talking about Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power. They reportedly pushed the intervention, with Gates, Brennan, and other male “sissies” in the administration opposed. It’s kind of a mix of criticism – Obama waited too long and had to be shamed by his women, but acted too quickly because women are emotional. It’s right out of the Herbert Dune novel.
Addendum: Margaret Carlson on “girl power.“
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March 22, 2011 at 8:16 pm
Ernie's Place
“… He who controls the Spice controls the universe and what Piter did not tell you is we have control of someone who is very close, very close, …”
But, I guess that you would have to be a Dune fan to know that…
March 22, 2011 at 9:16 pm
Rose
“This no-fly zone doesn’t mean anything to us because Gaddafi only had a few planes and they were doing nothing.”
“We need a no-drive zone because it is tanks and snipers that are killing us.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-jet-crashes-in-libya-pilots-safe-gates-says-air-strikes-should-slow-soon/2011/03/22/ABNC0lCB_story.html?hpid=z1
we are to understand that its former components—tribunals, renditions, preventative detention, Guantanamo, predator assassinations, Iraq, the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and intercepts—were as subversive to the Constitution under Bush as they are essential to our security under Obama.
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/america-through-the-looking-glass/
Libya and the Left’s Sickening Hypocrisy on the Use of Military Force
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/libya_and_the_lefts_sickening.html
But best of all:
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
Senator Barack Hussein Obama, December 20, 2007
You asked. We’re waiting to see who has the courage of their convictions. Kucinich does. Michael Moore wants the Peace prize rescinded. Medea Benjamin has a pinched look on her face. Eight years of screaming about an illegal war, and now you really have one. Eight years, and now you have a President who not only went it without consulting Congress, but he did it for nation-building. At least that’s his story of the hour.
Tragic.
March 22, 2011 at 10:17 pm
Not A Native
Of course Obama has a big target painted on his back and the Repukes take shots whenever they can. Wasn’t John McCain earlier calling for Khadaffi’s ouster and criticizing Obama for not taking immediate action?
But this is truly Obama’s war now and he’ll have to win support from an impatient and anxious public I hope his plan works. He’s a lot smarter than Bush, that helps. But there are a lot of moving parts in this kind of operation, Obama will need to be a master juggler and be lucky too. He’ll have only white hair when Nov, 2012 rolls around.
March 23, 2011 at 12:49 am
Anonymous
Rose supports wars, as long as they are waged by Republicans. Rose supports deficit reduction as long as it’s a Democrat in charge.
We understand Rose.
March 23, 2011 at 5:11 am
Plain Jane
The legal justifications for war are:
1. A binding UN declaration.
2. An imminent humanitarian disaster
3. Being invited in by the country
4. Self-defence.
There must be no other way of dealing with the threat and the response must be focussed and proportionate.
#1 and #2 are clearly met in Libya. Whether the president needs congressional approval to enforce a UN approved no-fly zone is debatable. That intervention was necessary to prevent wholesale slaughter of rebels and horrendous civilian “collateral damage,” is not.
March 23, 2011 at 5:45 am
Mitch
So in Iraq, where we’d basically sponsored the dictator for years and where he was posing no new threat to his people, it was OK to invade.
But in Libya, where there was an ongoing slaughter of civilians being conducted by a madman, the President should have waited to intervene? For how long? For an additional month? To debate with a legislature whose decisions are made purely on the basis of whether they will hurt the administration?
If there is any decent use for America’s might, it is to prevent madmen from slaughtering the civilian populations they “lead.”
March 23, 2011 at 7:19 am
Eric Kirk
Rose – I agree that this war, like many others over the past century, may not be Constitutional. But Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Carter, Clinton, and both Bushes initiated military action on numerous occasions which were not in the defense of the US without initial congressional approval. They got it after the fact. I agree that Obama is hypocritical in that he publicly expressed that it was unconstitutional, but the sudden concern for such initial approval from Republicans after half a century of silence is also troubling. But I agree with you that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional. I assume you were in the streets when it was passed?
The left is clearly divided here. Kucinich, Nader, Moore, Walzer, Fisk, Grayson, and Jon Stewart are certainly prominent names who have opposed it to date. I expect more to come, as they did with Clinton. But this is an invasion which is classically liberal – international support, for humanitarian purposes, etc. It did in fact prevent a massacre in Benghazi, saving probably tens of thousands of lives.
I notice that conservative figures aren’t really saying whether they approve of the war or not. I think they’re waiting to see which way the wind blows. They will criticize how it’s carried out. He was too quick. He was too slow. He’s listening to the women. His men are wimps. But that’s all culture war crap, designed to make political points in the short term and buy time until they deal with the renewed isolationism which came with the tea party newcomers.
March 23, 2011 at 7:41 am
Joel Mielke
“Eight years of screaming about an illegal war, and now you really have one.”
Rose lives in a world of wonders.
March 23, 2011 at 9:34 am
Eric Kirk
I assume it will be publicly showcased at some future point, but you have to credit Obama (and yes, I do think it’s the administration and not Sarkozy for reason I can go into later) for some behind-the-scenes diplomacy. The first big surprise was to turn around Russia, China, and Germany with the Security Council vote. Today we have news that Turkey, who had been opposed, is now joining the coalition (along with more Arab countries). Turkey is especially important because its conversion represents one big step towards converting the action to a NATO action (which I believe under treaty precludes the necessity of Congressional approval over the long run, although I suspect that Obama will request approval anyway and congress will deliver).
In any case, I am skeptical of Obama’s actions here in both practical and legal terms. But he (or his women) are doing a phenomenal job of generating a coalition arguably stronger than Gulf War 1.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2011/03/nato_inching_closer_to_deal_on_libya_role.php?ref=fpa
But add Amy Goodman and her Democracy Now guests to the growing list of left opposition. Will there be a left-right coalition? I do remember Libertarians marching against Gulf War 1. But now we have the tea party isolationist revival, which is one of the reasons why the tea party candidates last fall desperately tried to avoid any discussion of the wars – and Sharon Angle got tripped up.
March 23, 2011 at 10:20 am
tra
As much as I like Amy Goodman and appreciate what the folks at Democracy Now bring us in the way of news analysis and opinion that is often unavailable in any other daily news broadcast, I strongly suspect that if the U.S. and other Western powers had not acted, and widespread slaughter of the rebels and their supporters was the result, Goodman and DN would be excoriating the Obama administration for not acting, with plenty of comparisons to Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur.
March 23, 2011 at 10:46 am
Eric Kirk
Hard to argue the point tra. The action has stalled the Libyan military and they had intended to go into Benghazi with “no mercy or pity.”
March 23, 2011 at 11:17 am
Plain Jane
I agree, Tra. I admire Amy Goodman immensely and she certainly deserves the respect her opinions are given, but there are no perfect answers to such complex problems. Dithering and negotiating while people are being slaughtered isn’t a humane option. If the US restricted its interventions to humanitarian crises, regardless of the lack of economic interest in the region, we would have more credibility (and money) when innocent people need our help.
March 23, 2011 at 11:37 am
tra
I haven’t listened to all the DN broadcasts in the weeks leading up to the Security Council resolution, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear at least one or two guests complaining that the “dithering and negotiating” was taking too long, and that the no-fly zone was needed immediately. I do think that some folks just didn’t grasp the fact that just declaring a no-fly zone doesn’t establish one as a reality — a no-fly zone necessarily entails attacks on ground installations.
Of course, the current Security Council resolution goes well beyond the establishment of a no-fly zone, and includes authorization for “all necessary measures (short of full-scale foreign invasion and occupation” to stop the attacks on civilians, and this is being interpreted as authorizing the coalition using air power to go after Gaddafi’s artillery, tanks, armed military columns. So I suppose that some folks may be O.K. with a no-fly zone but against these further actions…but it’s not at all clear that a no-fly zone alone would have prevented a ground-based bloodbath in Benghazi and other rebel-held areas (of course even the current policy doesn’t guarantee that, either, the argument is over whether it at least reduces the liklihood of that sort of thing).
One thing everyone can agree on is that it’s a godawful mess.
March 23, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Not A Native
My prayers(and hopes) are with Obama and for him to have the wisdom to bring peace and stability to Libya. No matter what unfolds, there will be more killings. Nobody on the Left can claim their position is justified because it results in no bloodshed.
March 23, 2011 at 2:34 pm
Eric Kirk
Re that ideological confusion, poor Newt Gingrich can’t make up his mind what he supports. Probably because the polls are ambiguous.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/03/bouncing_off_the_walls_in_a_different_way_1.php?ref=fpblg
From TPM:
Gingrich has just taken to Facebook to try to rationalize his completely contradictory position. However, what he says is so convoluted and hard to follow that we now have four credentialed TPM news specialists reviewing the post to determine which way he’s now flipping. We’ll have more shortly when our team determines what he’s saying.
March 23, 2011 at 3:38 pm
Bolithio
Lady Hawk…. Now thats a good movie!
March 23, 2011 at 10:45 pm
Eric Kirk
John Judis thinks the left has it wrong. But I think he misreads much of the left.
http://www.tnr.com/article/world/85559/libya-intervention-american-left-wrong
Juan Cole supports the intervention.
http://www.juancole.com/2011/03/top-ten-ways-that-libya-2011-is-not-iraq-2003.html
March 24, 2011 at 8:35 am
highboldtage
tra says:
” I do think that some folks just didn’t grasp the fact that just declaring a no-fly zone doesn’t establish one as a reality — a no-fly zone necessarily entails attacks on ground installations. ”
I think that you are wrong about this, tra, we had over ten years of “no fly zone ” over Iraq and the only time ground targets were engaged was when some air defense radar lit up. This is just Obama Administration spin.
I think that the imposition of a no fly zone was an act of war without the approval of Congress and was unconstituional usurpation of power by Obama, however I blame Congress for the lack of courage they are showing. They should call themselves into session immediately to address this constitutional issue.
It may well turn out that Congress agrees that there is a real humanitarian crisis in Libya and authorizes these strikes but the debate must happen or our democracy is a sham.
have a peaceful day,
Bill
March 25, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Eric Kirk
Just received an email with the latest out of Libya.
نور اگر رفت سایه پیدا نیست نقش دیوار و چشم خیره ما نقش سایه دگر نمی دان نور اگر رفت سایه. ر رفت سایه پیدا نیست نقش دیوار و چشم خیره ما خیره ما نقش سایه دگر نمی دان نور اگر رفت سایه. ر رفت سایه پیدا نیست نقش دیوار و چشم خیره ما نقش سایه دگر نمی دان نور اگر رفت سایه پیدا نیست نقش دیوار و چشم خیره ما
Hopefully that clears something up for someone.
March 28, 2011 at 9:20 pm
The Obama Doctrine: “Interests and Values” « Sohum Parlance II
[...] doctrine of interventionism. Basically, Obama deliberated with his advisers, and opted for what the warrior women pushed, and through some remarkable diplomacy obtained the right combo of support and abstentions [...]