In December 2007, The Boston Globe asked 12 presidential candidates about military action aimed at stopping Iran from building nuclear weapons. “In what circumstances, if any,” the Globe asked, “would the president have constitutional authority to bomb Iran without seeking a use-of-force authorization from Congress?”
Barack Obama responded: “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.”
According to Obama’s own standard, then, he violated the Constitution when he ordered a military attack against Libya. Worse, he did so in service of a dangerously open-ended rationale for military intervention that is completely unmoored from national defense.
In a letter to congressional leaders on Monday, Obama sought to justify his unilateral action by citing the March 17 UN Security Council resolution authorizing member states to “take all necessary measures . . . to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack” by forces loyal to Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy. When Obama announced the US airstrikes against Libya on Saturday, he likewise sought legal refuge in other countries, saying, “The writ of the international community must be enforced.”
Nonsense, says Louis Fisher, a former senior specialist on separation of powers at the Congressional Research Service, who literally wrote the book on war powers. “It’s impossible for Congress to take its war powers and give [them] to the UN,” Fisher told The Wall Street Journal. “Other than defensive actions — and there’s no defensive actions here — this has to be done by Congress.”
Even if Obama had bothered to obey the Constitution by seeking congressional approval, intervening in Libya’s civil war would take the US military in the wrong direction at a time when fiscal realities dictate that America retire as global policeman.
America spends about as much on “defense” as the rest of the world combined. If you want to know why, consider how casually our commanders in chief order American servicemen to risk their lives for purposes that have nothing to do with national security.
Obama claims “we cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy.” Yes, we can, and we often do.
There is no moral consistency, and little rhyme or reason to US government decisions about which brutal dictators to challenge. The regimes that endorsed the war with Libya — supposedly justified by outrage over “gross and systematic violation of human rights” — include quite a few, such as Gabon, Syria and Saudi Arabia, that are guilty of the same crimes.
In any case, US taxpayers have a right to expect that the money they’re compelled to contribute to this nation’s defense will be used for that purpose. American military personnel have a right to expect that their missions will have something to do with protecting US security, the function they have agreed to serve.
Obama’s humanitarian justification for waging war against Khadafy’s regime harks back to George H.W. Bush’s 1992 intervention in Somalia’s civil war, which ended so ignominiously that his own son, running for president in 2000, repudiated “nation building,” calling for a more “humble” foreign policy guided by “what’s in the best interest of the United States.” He ended up interpreting that interest so broadly that it justified an aggressive Mideast nation-building campaign.
As a presidential candidate, Obama condemned his predecessor’s “war of choice” in Iraq. As president, he not only continues to wage that war, but also endorses a justification for military action that promises one war of choice after another.