I think the Obama administration’s arguments for why the War Powers Resolution does not apply to our actions in Libya are straight-up bullshit. It pains me to say it, but there it is. Some of you have been trying to make legal arguments to defend the administration, but please note that they offer no legal justification whatsoever. There’s a good reason for that. They have no legal justification. Instead, they simply argue that we’re not engaged in hostilities in Libya, that our role is limited, that the duration is expected to be short, and whatever else they can throw out there to obfuscate. They do not say that the WPR is unconstitutional. They do not say that their actions are justified by the Authorization to Use Military Force in Afghanistan or by the United Nations Charter, or by any other law or treaty.
“We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own,” [State Department legal adviser] Mr. [Harold] Koh said. “We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped, or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.”
To begin with, I am not comfortable with how we’ve decided to give a wink and a nod to our CIA forces on the ground and not consider them as armed forces or as engaged in hostilities. People keep saying “We don’t have any troops on the ground.” Well, that’s just semantics. Of course we do have troops on the ground; they’re just not employed by the Pentagon. But, even if we agree to debate this on these absurd grounds, we’re still engaged in hostilities through airstrikes and drone attacks and direct assistance in the furtherance of such attacks.
This shouldn’t be so difficult. The administration shouldn’t be fighting Congress over this. If they hadn’t acted arrogantly, they wouldn’t be having a problem right now.
Obama and Koh know full well that if this “limited mission” turns into a ground war, the WPR will have been effectively, and essentially illegally, bypassed. The real question is, did Obama fall into this trap out of conviction, or out of a need to appear “tough” or somehow heroic? Or did he just totally misjudge the likelihood that his action would end in yet another quagmire for the US? At the least, we were owed a national debate on the subject before being committed to so risky an adventure. I begin to understand why he keeps wanting us to quit looking to the past — we might actually learn something if we did.
what they thought in the beginning, but it doesn’t make a difference whether it escalates or not. They are not in compliance now, and after Sunday, they’re going to be at loggerheads with Congress. And for no good reason.
Point is, escalation was a highly likely result. In that light, their actions were a preemptive irreversible strike against the law ever taking effect. It was political scamming instead of thinking about consequences. I sure expected more from this administration.
If the life of my father, mother, brother or child was at risk, I would require a thorough definition of “limited nature.”
People flying airplanes or living on ships are targets. I don’t care if you know how to kill with robots, you’re still a killer.
Obama might as well abandon the fund-raing emails to me. I know I said that all I wanted was the SALT treaty, but this is too much to bear. I’m still “reality-based” and real tired of putting my faith in fools.
The US military will lose more planes and fighter pilots flying training exercises in the US than will ever be loss in this mission in Libya. This is nothing but another damn excuse for liberals to be complaining about something, ANY FUCKIN’ THING CONCERNING THIS PRESIDENT!
Before I would outright dismiss this statement, I would want the Administration to report what exactly the US role currently is.
The notion that there are CIA forces on the ground has been consistently alleged only because the US is involved in the operation. Because it’s the CIA, only they and hopefully the Intelligence committees know what is going on. Every other report comes with some sort of agenda buried in it.
I think the State Department has been caught flatfooted by the fact that Congress has moved the goalposts just because there is a Democrat in office. They should have seen this coming and pre-emptively consulted with Congress publicly. Now, they’ve set themselves up for a committee ambush.
A Democratic President shouldn’t be fighting a Republican controlled Congress who is only opposing our Libya involvement for political opportunism? Let’s see if they’ll take the same position if a Republican wins in 2012 and starts aiming for Iran without congressional authority. And let’s see if the media gives a damn what Dennis Kucinich, if he finds a congressional district to carpet bag, and other liberals have to say about that.
I don’t know if I’ve said this on this blog or not, but if for some reason Gary Johnson was able to get the Republican nomination, I would have to do some serious soul-searching on which candidate that I’d vote for. I’m tired of war, and Obama would not be president without his opposition to Iraq. And now he’s dragged us into TWO MORE FUCKING WARS.
Authorization to Use Military Force in Afghanistan
The first AUMF authorized the “GWOT”, and has no reference to geography:
Under that original joint resolution the President was given the authority – so far not limited in any way – to wage a “GWOT”, with an emphasis on ‘global’. The second AUMF created specific authorization for the war in Iraq.
this is limited: “… those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons…”
The president has not determined that Gaddafi planned, authorized, committed, aided, or harbored with regard to 9/11.
I agree with you on this one.
The Administration’s argument is that the current actions by the US do not constitute a war. Unless you know what the US contribution to NATO now is (we are not talking about establishing the no-fly zone in March), you will be hard pressed to argue with this. Does flying a sortie every now and then when NATO needs particular capabilities constitute being at war as defined under the WPR? I stress this because I think that the US is in fact doing very little action in Libya itself. Any costs of implementing the UN Security Council Resolution are likely being incurred for supplying body armor and night vision capability to the rebels and for general relief in the areas under rebel control. Other than that, the costs are those that would be incurred for maintaining the forces anyway. And the major portion of the cost is in all those Tomahawk missiles that were fired in the first weeks of the war to establish the no-fly zone.
It might be that the Administration’s low profile is because they are doing much less than the US would have done in previous administrations.
Limited scope is one of the things that comes up in many legal decisions about the definition of war–even during the Continental Congress.
It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out, coupled with the debt shenanigans and all I mean.
The Administration’s position is absurd…as is any Foreign Policy which is implicitly – but deniably – ongoing war on a global scale…a war of terrorism by state agents, exempted by the idea that if you put a uniform on a participant in a foreign adventure, he magically becomes a ‘hero.’
The blockade on Cuba has gone on for decades. Ditto economic warfare on North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria…. Why do you think the supposed proponent of ‘free trade’ is so focused on containing peoples and restricting trade ?
Yep. Sanctions are restricting trade….and an act of war. ‘Security’ restraints on selected technology are ‘restricting trade.’
Nor are Black Ops murdering foreign nationals – such as actions in Iran openly declared in 2006 killing the Iranian military and government – exempt from being war to any sane person.
But. I don’t know what you people are smoking. Obama ran on a position of changing the focus of the American military away from Iraq to reactivating the front in Afghanistan ( as a ‘just’ war ) … not as a peacemaker. How many could find real difference between the policies of the two ‘war’ parties without inventing all sorts of specious reasons as to how they were being offered ‘change you can believe in.’
So now – as in Vietnam – regional war is constantly expanding across the Middle East from the Indian subcontinent and involving the former territory of the East India Company…which lost 12,000 men in one week in the Khyber Pass in 1846 at the location of the European drawn ‘border’ called the Durand Line : a convenient means to promote nationhood to a mountainous sandbox full of diverse tribes and peoples.
Just like North America…whose ‘Indians’ were many peoples speaking different languages conveniently presented as a homogenous brew instead of stunning diversity of nomadic peoples.
Nomadic…as in transient,herding goats across the ‘border’ from winter to summer pasture.The goats are mostly dead too.It reminds me of a quiet re-enactment of killing native stock in ‘buffalo hunts’.
They’ve been starving for decades. Who will pay for ‘Western’ amenities and bureaucracies ?
The invader. It worked when Charlie Wilson’s War was running and the USSR was sucked into the area in an effort to restrain Islamic extremists…which the US armed with modern weaponry.
So save the COIN sophistry designed to suck in people with no appreciation of cultural and geographic variations outside their own borders.
We’re still wasting time discussing the ideas outside the al Qaeda mercenary frame which say that the activity of the PNAC Think Tank which installed Bu$hCo by hijacking the US Presidential elections as related in BradBlog as ‘Conspiracy Theory’. There’s an interesting description of those saying what they will do and doing it ! Oh yeah. They were going to ‘decapitate governments’ in an arc across the oil bearing regions of the Middle East.
Have you noticed Twitter Revolutions and Colour Revolutions yet ? I wonder why people are extreme…when they aren’t left in peace but are bombed in their homes as a ‘threat’…make that full caps and howled ! B.S.
It’s been going on all my life and my father’s and for generations before. That’s British History…and the new continent’s history as well.
Look up ‘Leading to War’ ; a website outlining the trail of lies going into Iraq…again.
This is all the Republicans’ fault.
Seriously. They poisoned the well. There’s no reason to expect that they’d treat issues of national security or war with any seriousness or partisan-free patriotism.
They didn’t on closing gitmo. They didn’t on New START (nothing more than a ripple in the pond in the grand sweep of history on nuclear weapons policy, for the record). They are a bunch of sociopathic monsters. The admin knows this. And it isn’t going to prostrate itself before that psychotic House any more than it absolutely has to.
So now they’re playing the legalistic game. And it looks embarrassing, but I imagine the WH plain doesn’t give a fuck anymore.
what do you expect? Obama was bequeathed an imperial presidency, one that has been affirmed in theory and in practice by both parties. Congress has made itself irrelevant on war issues for years.
why should Obama feel constrained? Bush never did.
I don’t like it either, but jeez guys, didja just fall off the turnip truck? Power is never ceded without a fight.
That said, it’s imperative that we speak out. Just because Obama CAN act like Bush, doesn’t mean he should.
Jack Goldsmith – hardly a hack – does not agree.
See this article in Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2288869/pagenum/all/
If nothing else, Goldmith’s discussion should make it clear that there are legitimate, arguable positions, for and against the constitutionality of what the administration has been doing in Libya.
I don’t think he disagrees with me.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.