According to the United States Constitution, troops can only be deployed when Congress formally declares war. The last time this was done was at the start of World War II. This might come as a surprise to anyone who remembers the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the first Gulf War, Afghanistan or Iraq. There were also no formal declarations when troops were used for "humanitarian purposes" in Bosnia, Kosovo or Somalia.
As stated in previous columns, Congress dislikes having all that authority that the Constitution delegated to it so it has gradually meted it out to other branches. In 1973 after being burned for their support for the Vietnam War (though it was not even then done constitutionally), Congress passed the War Powers Resolution over President Nixon's veto. Essentially abdicating its war making powers to a President who didn't want them, the War Powers Resolution enables the President to send troops into war for 60 days without Congressional approval when national security is threatened. Over the years, even these standards have been relaxed so that national security does not have to be threatened and the 60 day limit is waived.
For longer wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress has passed authorizations of force. These give the President the final say so as to whether or not we go to war for an extended period of time. The authorizations of force are meant to give legitimacy to a war if undertaken but as we saw with Iraq, Congress loves to act tough only to abandon wars if they become unpopular. Maybe if they had to formally declare war, they would tend to take their war making power a little more seriously.
All of this brings us to Libya where Obama has used the War Powers Resolution to deploy the military. This seems contradictory to his belief in an interview to The Boston Globe in 2007 when he stated, "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." No one has asked how Libya endangers national security because it is pretty obvious that it doesn't.
Although reasonable people can disagree about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Afghanistan absolutely fell under the War Powers Resolution when its government endorsed an attack on American soil and at least a case was made for Iraq at the time with corroboration of many foreign intelligence agencies. As for the sixty day limit, don't expect Obama to be handicapped by a time frame when he didn't let himself be tied down by the national security requirement.
Obama has set an even more interesting precedent by saying that we are not involved in a war with Libya. In 1984, George Orwell predicted a new lexicon would emerge from overarching government. Newspeak, as it was called, turned truth upon its head and acted to obscure what government was actually. Obama has said we are not involved in a war but a Kinetic Military Action. Last year he announced that the Global War On Terror would now be the Overseas Contingency Operation and acts of terror would be called Man Caused Disasters.
Obama's justification for his more genteel term is that we will not have "boots on the ground" but he has actually sent 2200 marines into Libya. Obama has said that he is reluctant to send troops but cannot stand by while a bloodbath ensues. However, America has stood by while Darfur is drowning in blood. In the Middle East alone, cases could be made on similar grounds for intervention in Tunisia, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, and Sudan. Saddam killed more than ten times as many of his own people than Qaddafi and even used chemical weapons on the Kurds, are liberals also prepared to embrace that war retroactively?
Even worse, Obama's reason for entering and benchmark for leaving keep changing. Originally, we were there because Qaddafi must go. Then after speaking with his allies, Obama clarified that the UN mandate only went so far as stopping the slaughter of the rebels. Obama then declared victory but has not withdrawn his forces. Likely because the rebels would be slaughtered if we pulled out. If that doesn't quite sound like victory, that's because it is not.
The real reason Obama has gone into Libya was because the French and British were already going to go in. International consensus, through the UN if possible, justifies any war to the liberal mind. If the peace movement largely dissolved when Obama was elected, it has now been co-opted to support a war in a foreign land where no vital US interest exists and there is no clear mission and no clear exit strategy. Sound familiar?
A NOTE TO MY READERS:
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