Mar 22 2011
No End Justifies Unconstitutional Means
America has lost its moral compass over Libya. I watched The Factor last night (probably for the last time) and reacted in revulsion as Bill O’Reilly made the same claim all dictators and mass murderers begin with – the end justifies the means. He went on and on about the Lockerbie bombing, a terrorist act from over two decades ago, and how this act was sufficient reason to trash the UN’s Charter and America’s Constitution.
Short sighted, arrogant and stupid. And then to watch someone I admire follow ‘Ol Bill down the tubes (Karl Rove) I realized that America had lost its moral bearing in another slickly crafted ride down the slippery slope.
As I mentioned before, the Libyan emergency was ignited by loose lips in Berlin, Paris, London and Washington DC. The leaders of these so called beacons of democracy called for Qadaffi to step down – in essence giving the green light for protesters to turn into armed rebels. George H. W. Bush made this same mistake once in Iraq, igniting an uprising in the South which culminated in a bloody crack down by Saddam Hussein while we sat by and watched the carnage.
Sadly, President Bush knew better than to compound his loose lips mistake with military invasion of a sovereign country. I knew it probably ate his soul to see what transpired. He had hoped the masses would be strong enough to throw off the tyrant. Sadly we have not learned much from Nazi Germany, Communist Russia and China, Pol Pot, Hussein, the Balkans and every other example of totalitarian rule. A strong and brutal leader can easily muster enough carnage to hold back the people of Main Street.
Today it seems even easier to stand by and watch the country so many fought and died for disappear in a sea of inaction. Let me be clear here, the manufactured (accidentally or deliberately) calamity in Libya is not sufficient excuse to throw out our constitution. There is no end that justifies assassinating our country. Mass murderers, child rapists, greedy businessmen and terrorists have all been dealt with under our constitution. The mess in Libya is not a legitimate exception.
The Washington Times has a good read on this, at least from violating the UN Charter:
Under its own rules, however, the United Nations cannot legally authorize military action to shape the internal affairs of member states. Article 2 section 7 of the U.N. charter states that, “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter.” Chapter VII of the charter, which enumerates U.N. intervention powers, applies only to international breaches of the peace. The December 1981 U.N. “Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention and Interference in the Internal Affairs of States” reaffirmed this principle with its solemn declaration that, “No State or group of States has the right to intervene or interfere in any form or for any reason whatsoever in the internal and external affairs of other States.”
That’s right sports fans, UN Resolution 1973 authorizing military bombardment in Libya is illegal. Except there is no UN Supreme Court to take this violation to, nor are there any other checks or balances on the UN. It just rewrote its rules by fiat in a rush to fix a mess started by France, Germany, Britain and American leaders. Just because these loose lips ignited the carnage does not mean they can use the UN to take over Libya. But that is what is happening.
And then what? We don’t even know what the rebels are fighting for!
Worst yet, President Obama (supposed law professor) used an improper UN resolution to illegally commit our nation to war without due process or due cause. There was no imminent threat to the US or its citizens, the imminent threat was to the Libyan rebels. Therefore there is no way to invoke the war powers act. Thus Obama had to go to Congress to get support for this bombardment of a sovereign nation.
I tend to agree on many fronts with Josh Marshall at TPM on this:
It’s not clear to me how the best case scenario can be anything more than our maintaining a safe haven in Benghazi for the people who were about to be crushed because they’d participated in a failed rebellion. So Qaddafi reclaims his rule over all of Libya except this one city which has no government or apparent hope of anything better than permanent limbo. Where do we go with that?
…
I’ve heard people saying well, we took too long to stop the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and we didn’t lift a finger to stop the genocide in Rwanda, so let’s not make the same mistake this time. But these seem like preposterous comparisons. This is ugly and it’s brutal but a lot of people getting killed in a failed rebellion isn’t genocide. It’s not.
…
So let’s review: No clear national or even humanitarian interest for military intervention. Intervening well past the point where our intervention can have a decisive effect. And finally, intervening under circumstances in which the reviled autocrat seems to hold the strategic initiative against us. This all strikes me as a very bad footing to go in on.
…
But it strikes me as a mess, poorly conceived, ginned up by folks with their own weird agendas, carried out at a point well past the point that it was going to accomplish anything. Just all really bad.
This is why we have checks and balances. This is why a President cannot play Emperor of the Free World and use our military on ill conceived ideas. This is why the UN Charter does not allow for vigilante groups forming and destroying their neighbors on concocted incidents. This is why there is a cool down period for the President to come forward to the People’s Representatives to make his case and get a vote of support.
Sadly we have allowed an impending massacre of protesters turned rebels to throw out our Constitution in a rush to CYA loose talk from a few weeks ago. There is no uglier way to lose our nation than at the hands of incompetent buffoons. Congress needs to step in and demand the administration follow the due process and scrutiny required to make sure we don’t randomly and carelessly destroy human lives. Obama at one time understood the restrictions on a President to wage war. He threw that understanding to floor this week, demonstrating once again why inexperience can be so damaging.
We cannot let the goal of removing Qadaffi to be an excuse to throw out what makes our country unique. Once you make exceptions there is no putting that Genie back in the lamp. If Karl Rove has succumbed, then I don’t see how we can reverse this run down the slippery slope.
We may look back on this moment and see when it all fell apart finally.
Which leads me to what are clearly impeachable offenses (which does not mean we need to initiate an impeachment process). I hate impeachment and recalls because they eat away at our democracy. They should be used in rare and extraordinary situations (not lying about affairs). But if there ever was an incident were the President violated his oath to uphold the Constitution – this is it. I am not there yet, but I can see why it would not be a bad move. Something has to pull us back from the brink here.
Update: We are already seeing mission creep, where we have moved from defending civilians to participating in the rebellion as partners:
Allied forces expanded their air campaign over Libya to thwart Muammar Qaddafi’s fighters and enable rebels to regain control of cities, as leaders debated who should be in overall control of the operation.
We are at war in a country we have no business being in.
Addendum: And don’t even get me started about how a legacy-obsessed Secretary of State orchestrated her Swan Song exit. We have all been manipulated by egos so large they can’t help but remind us why the founders of America limited the role of government in the first place.
Update: When Russia makes more sense than our liberal leaders, you know it is bad.
AJ it was George H.W. Bush who encouraged the uprising and was unable to help.
Obama said in Chile yesterday as he patted himself on the back and criticized George Bush…….
“In the past there have been times when the United States acted unilaterally or did not have full international support, and as a consequence typically it was the United States military that ended up bearing the entire burden.”
For a skinny guy, Obama has crap oozing from every pore.
Thanks Kathie!
So France, Italy and others in Europe get their oil from Libya. If they leave Gaddafi in power they will not get a drop more, says Gaddafi. So now what? Who takes out Gadaffi. Obama thinks our roll will be over in days, so Europe will put boots on the ground and take out Gaddafi? It will be interesting to watch. So this is really a war for oil!
How much of their oil comes from Libya?
Why are we expecting Obama and the Obamabots to follow the Constitution at this point? They have snuck/forced through legislation, created Czars rather than go through the appointment process, and now this! Obama and many people in Congress should lose their jobs. Any Congressman not speaking out about the President’s unconsitutional actions should be removed from office. This is their job.
Even with the horrific tragedy of 9/11 President Bush went to Congress and received the Authorization for Use of Force against the terrorists. And in that situation the President was allowed to send troops for 60 days without the prior authorization from Congress.
Obama, Congress, and the other leaders need to learn that there are consequences for their actions. Society no longer holds anyone to those standards!
Good post, and I agree completely. As I said in the other thread, we now have only 2 options left:
1) cut and run
2) escalate, escalate, escalate.
Obama is saying we’re going to now hand this over to NATO. Oops! Nobody consulted NATO member Turkey, and they’re now threatening to block any NATO ownership of this operation?
So who’s in charge? WHO KNOWS??? This is madness, and is going to result in disaster!
btw, I gave up on O’Reilly years ago. He has not even a semblance of a consistent philosophical position on anything, and he just pops off in favor of whatever makes him feel good at the moment – as long as he doesn’t have to think too hard about it. And Rove! Actually, it’s obvious why he’s on board; all the criticism he’s gotten over the years has stung and he’s now desperately hoping that the Washington crowd is going to turn around and say “oh yes Karl, we now see that you were right all along.” He’s an idiot if he thinks that’s ever going to happen no matter how things play out.
At least it isn’t America that’s lost it’s moral bearings, it’s our political elites – and that INCLUDES Karl Rove.
You had your day, Karl. Now shut up and go away.
p.s. one minor quibble with one line; you wrote “Obama at one time understood the restrictions on a President to wage war.”
I would only say that at one time Obama mouthed some words from a teleprompter that were written by someone else who thought they would be politically popular, but I don’t think he “understood” the restrictions anymore than my dog could understand Paradise Lost.
I quit watching OR long time ago.
He is a putz with a humongous ego and not much to back it up.
So, in that respect he is not very much different from our Hussein in chief…
Karl Rove?
Another pusillanimous guy who brought great harm to this country..
Regarding Libya, it will be a complete disaster.
The outcome may VERY well be AlQaida in power or Qaddafi, in power, rooting for revenge.
We should have learned our lesson after Vietnam, and Iraq.
I shudder in mental pain seeing what our great country has become.
It’s a mess.
….not only that. The coaliton partners don’t even agree on the UN resolution. Can the coalition arm the rebels? Susan Rice (US) says “yes”. The Brits say, “no”.
It’s a double mess.
Now they’re talking about some political committee????
As for Bill O’Reilly, when my brother was living in Nigeria, CNN was the only station available to him. So whenever he came back to the states, he was hooked on OR. Cuz OR’s better than CNN! And that’s CNN Europe!
I don’t really watch OR. He never came across as a full conservative…just somewhere in the middle but never settling on one spot of the scale.
Obama has brought us to an unsustainable war with no victory in sight.
With most countries in the middle east in term-oil, why choose Libya to move on? The French wanted it….so what, we bend over backwards to support the French? Obama must have amnesia…….the French double crossed us on Iraq. We could have politely said no, we can’t afford to help, we are still in Iraq. And Gaddafi is a snake in the grass. He brought down a commercial airliner for goodness sake. If we were going to support someone why not help Egypt set up a credible government? Honestly I just don’t get where Obama comes from or where he is going. This is a guy who pulls stuff out of thin air.
Now he is saying it is a good policy……we saved peoples lives. Kinda like the trillion dollars saved or created a few jobs so it is worth is. Gaddafi’s revenge may change his mind, because he is lethal.
We are all feeling sick about this because there is so much intellectual dishonesty about it from the get-go.
barack obama does not like American strength and power. Period. He does not like American exceptionalism. He is acting out his covert hostility towards this nation, imho, in MULTIPLE ways. This is just one. His disdain is clear as can be.
AND WE ARE ALL STUCK WITH HIM, (and the destruction) thanks to those who WOULD NOT listen and heed the warnings about this guy… a “brother” of Louis Farrahkan.
On another subject, did anyone see Beck today? Several outlets have picked up the story of the Seiu guy, Lerner, on tape talking about destroying the US economy starting in May of this year. Check it out at Business Insider or Lucianne.com…or view the tape on YouTube. All I can say is GET PREPARED.
I saw a piece of Beck’s show – that Lerner guy is a class-A idiot, but I don’t think he has the capability to actually carry out anything he wants to do.
BUT it is a good window into the private mindset of the rad-left these days. They now realize that Obama was a failure and that they will never get what they want through democratic means.
So they want to destroy the country out of revenge. I don’t think that even they believe that will actually bring about what they want – but they DO think that if they can’t have it their way, then no one will have it.
The Left hates this country and everything it stands for.
I guess one of the most interesting things about this is that I always thought it was obvious that OR is a semi liberal playing a conservative for ratings. I guess he has been fooling a lot more people than I thought. Still, he has a good show as long as you understand where he’s coming from. Just last week, his mantra was, just the facts, ma’am. Now it’s “the bombing of Pan Am flight is justification for throwing the constitution to the winds and do what you want to do, if you’re a lib, to feel good about what obama is doing to destroy this country.
The left does, in fact, hate this country and obama is the leader of that left (at least he’s the empty suit that is the front man for the left) Let’s face it, there is no alternative to Fox News, and OR presents one of the more interesting shows on that network. It’s either watch that, or nothing. OR wants his show to remain No. 1 in it’s slot and as long as he plays a conservative, it will.
Karl Rove. interesting that he is so consumed by the fact that America loves Sarah Palin. He can’t deal with the thought that america loves someone that he doesn’t. I just love these polls that show that Palin is not the front runner. That, of course, means she is. The polls, as we all know, are controlled by the MSM, all libs…
I, personally, love the situation obama finds himself in. damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.. ESS: empty suit syndrome
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Now the savior, “The One” has his own quagmire, he has to go the distance now, or he will look like an idiot.
The Europeans will drop a few bombs and run as soon as they realize ground troups will be required, Obama will have to go the distance.
The has stepped into a pile of pooh with both feet the “right” and the “left”
Do you remember how the Arab League was going to send their own aircraft to help impose this “no-fly” zone? It turns out that Qatar sent 2 planes to help.
2 planes. That’s it – that’s the mighty power of the Arab League.
2 planes.
Oh, btw, UAE sent some planes, too. But they specified that their fighter jets could only be used for “Humanitarian Purposes.”
How do you use a fighter for “humanitarian purposes”? Park it on the tarmac and hold a bake sale in it’s shadow?
At least they’ve figured out who’s going to run it – NATO is going to run it, although to appease the French, the Germans, and the Turks, everyone will say that NATO is NOT running anything. And in France we will say that the French are running things to make Sarkozy look good in his upcoming election, even though everyone agrees that they aren’t and no one will take any orders from them. Nobody is going to take any orders from anyone else either, but the allies agree that they are all firmly committed to doing what any of them may feel like doing at any particular time. Or Not. That’s clear, isn’t it? What could go wrong?
If I was Qadaffy, I would be betting that Obama and the Eurotrash will cut and run before the month is out.
I am going to take the contrarian position. I do not believe there is a violation of the US Constitution, here. The War Powers Act gives Obama 60 days before he needs Congressional authority. I do not have any opinion, nor do I care, if the UN managed to violate its own Constitution as the UN is pretty much a continuing violation of its own Constitution.
However, having said I don’t believe this was a Constitutional violation does not mean I think Obama has well here. He has failed to even define his mission and objective. It would not have been difficult for Obama to have shown the courtesy of consulting with Congress. What we have here is another rookie mistake by a disinterested President.
I guess one of the most interesting things about this is that I always thought it was obvious that OR is a semi liberal playing a conservative for ratings. I guess he has been fooling a lot more people than I thought. Still, he has a good show as long as you understand where he’s coming from. Just last week, his mantra was, just the facts, ma’am. Now it’s “the bombing of Pan Am flight is justification for throwing the constitution to the winds and do what you want to do, if you’re a lib, to feel good about what obama is doing to destroy this country.
The left does, in fact, hate this country and obama is the leader of that left (at least he’s the empty suit that is the front man for the left) Let’s face it, there is no alternative to Fox News, and OR presents one of the more interesting shows on that network. It’s either watch that, or nothing. OR wants his show to remain No. 1 in it’s slot and as long as he plays a conservative, it will.
Karl Rove. interesting that he is so consumed by the fact that America loves Sarah Palin. He can’t deal with the thought that america loves someone that he doesn’t. I just love these polls that show that Palin is not the front runner. That, of course, means she is. The polls, as we all know, are controlled by the MSM, all libs…
I, personally, love the situation obama finds himself in. damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.. ESS: empty suit syndrome