Let's talk...Libya...you know, the war the MSM is largely ignoring

[sirs]

Can you imagine the deafening outrage, by the MSM & left, if this were Bush?  Where's the congressional authority for the continued use of military troops/assets, beyond Obama's executive privilege??  Where's the direct U.S. concerns that justify ongoing military force, and risk to their lives?? 

Where's the media, on this issue??

[sirs]

The White Man made him do it.

Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan recently unmasked the reason for President Barack Obama's unpopular, non-congressionally authorized, War Powers Resolution-violating decision to bomb Libya, a country that poses no imminent threat to the United States.

"We voted for our brother, Barack," said Farrakhan, "a beautiful human being with a sweet heart, and now he's an assassin. They've turned him into them."

"Them," of course, refers to the evil, racist, manipulative, all-powerful White Man, who as in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," seized Obama's mind, body and soul, and changed him into an enemy of the poor, the downtrodden, the black.

Don't snicker. Farrakhan may be on to something.

Here's what presidential candidate Obama said about use of force: "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." Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973 to restrain the president in non-imminent threat situations. Obama, however, disagrees that it applies to Libya. This humanitarian mission, Obama argues, does not involve "hostilities," a condition that triggers the WPR's application.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, however, before Obama made his Libya decision, told Congress what a "no-fly zone" over Libya required: "Let's just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses ... and then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down." Sounds a lot like "hostilities." And Americans, by a two-to-one ratio, oppose military involvement in Libya.

The White Man, says Farrakhan, forced Obama to bomb Libya for the oil. Obama's alleged humanitarian intent, he said, is merely a "noble motive to hide (America's) wicked agenda!"

Farrakhan's analysis also explains Obama's job-killing domestic economic policies ? the disastrous effect of which disproportionately hurts blacks. The White Man, after President Ronald Reagan, vowed, "Never again!"

Reagan, in the early '80s, faced an even tougher economy, with higher unemployment, higher inflation and higher interest rates. Reagan cut taxes, slowed the rate of domestic spending and decreased regulation on businesses.

Reagan, from The White Man's perspective, was catastrophic:
Black adult unemployment fell faster than white adult unemployment;
black teen unemployment fell faster that white teen unemployment;
black businesses were created at a rate faster than white businesses;
and the revenues of black businesses grew faster than those of white businesses.

Egads!

Sociologist Charles Murray, in one of the most important books on public policy in the last 50 years, "Losing Ground," explained how welfare dependency increased the number of black out-of-wedlock births. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 resulted in a dramatic decline in the welfare rolls, without a corresponding increase in abortion. Welfare recipients, a large percentage of whom are minorities, found jobs and became self-sufficient.

The White Man discovered an inexperienced, left-wing, collectivist, spread-the-wealth, tax-the-rich black senator from Illinois who had not read Murray's book or, if he had, did not believe it. In fact, then-Illinois State Sen. Obama spoke out against the Welfare Reform Act.

Determined not to repeat the Reagan mistake, The White Man hatched a plan.

Obama would be The One.

The White Man engineered his election, then programmed the charismatic Obama to enact policies guaranteed to have the opposite effect of Reagan's policies:

The White Man made Obama sign costly "health-care reform," which causes employers to drop coverage, premiums to increase and health-care quality to decline.

The White Man made Obama raise the minimum wage. This increases unemployment for those with the lowest skills, a disproportionate percentage of whom are black.

The White Man made Obama sign laws to rein in "Wall Street greed," but left untouched the real reasons behind the housing meltdown: Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, the FHA and the Community Reinvestment Act, all of which induced the otherwise non-creditworthy ? a disproportionate percentage of whom are racial minorities ? to take on mortgages they could not afford.

The White Man made Obama oppose choice in education, including the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program that, by lottery, gave vouchers to inner-city Washington, D.C., children and saw high-school graduation rates increase from 70 percent for applicants not offered a scholarship to 82 percent for the scholarship recipients.

The White Man made Obama support a nearly trillion-dollar "stimulus" package ? largely giving money to state workers and other supporters of the Democratic Party. It neither "saved or created" 3.5 million jobs nor prevented unemployment from reaching 8 percent. Unemployment actually rose to 10.2 percent, and now stands at 9.1 percent.

The results have exceeded The White Man's expectations.
Black teen unemployment is nearly 41 percent.
The unemployment rate for black adult males is 17.5 percent.

Yes, Obama's war for Big Oil and his anti-black economic polices mean lots of whites get trampled in the process. Collateral damage. Friendly fire. Addition by subtraction.

The White Man, as Farrakhan duly notes, is back.

[sirs]

Who takes us to war?

Is the Libya war legal? Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, it is not. President Obama has exceeded the 90-day period to receive retroactive authorization from Congress.

But things are not so simple. No president should accept ? and no president from Nixon on has accepted ? the constitutionality of the WPR, passed unilaterally by Congress over a presidential veto. On the other hand, every president should have the constitutional decency to get some congressional approval when he takes the country to war.

The model for such constitutional restraint is ? yes, Sen. Obama ? George W. Bush.

Not once but twice (Afghanistan and then Iraq) did Bush seek and receive congressional authorization, as his father did for the Persian Gulf War. On Libya, Obama did nothing of the sort. He claimed exemption from the WPR on the grounds that America in Libya is not really engaged in ?hostilities.?

To deploy an excuse so transparently ridiculous isn?t just a show of contempt for Congress and for the intelligence of the American people. It manages additionally to undermine the presidency?s own war-making prerogatives by implicitly conceding that if the Libya war really did involve hostilities, the president would indeed be subject to the WPR.

The worst of all possible worlds: Insult Congress, weaken the presidency. A neat trick.

But the question of war-making power is larger than one president?s blundering. We have a core constitutional problem. In balancing war-making power between Congress and the presidency, the Constitution grants Congress the exclusive right to declare war.

Problem is: No one declares war anymore. Since World War II, we?ve been involved in five major wars, and many minor engagements, without ever declaring war.

But it?s not just us. No one does. Declarations of war are a relic of a more aristocratic era, a time when, for example, an American secretary of state closed his department?s code-cracking office because ?gentlemen do not read each other?s mail.?

The power to declare war has become, through no fault of anyone, archaic and obsolete. Taken literally, it is as useless as granting Congress the right to regulate horse-and-buggies.

We need, therefore, some new way to fulfill the original constitutional intent. The WPR was a good try, but it failed because it was the work of Congress alone, which tried to shove it down the throat of the Executive, which, in turn, for over three decades has resisted it as an encroachment on the inherent powers of the commander in chief.

Moreover, the judiciary, which under our system is the ultimate arbiter of constitutionality, has consistently refused to adjudicate this ?political question? (to quote one appellate court judge) and thus resolve with finality the separation-of-powers dispute between the other two co-equal branches.

A James Baker-Warren Christopher commission on the war powers issue, which briefed President-elect Obama in 2008, was largely ignored at the time. But Libya gives the question new saliency and urgency. We need a new constitutional understanding, mutually agreed to by both political branches, that translates the war-declaration power into a more modern equivalent:

First, formalize the recent tradition of resolutions (Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq) authorizing the initiation of war, recognizing them as the functional equivalent of a declaration of war.

Second, establish special procedures for operations requiring immediacy and surprise, for example, notification of the House speaker, Senate majority leader and their opposition counterparts, in secret if necessary.

Third, in such cases, require retroactive authorization by the full Congress within an agreed period ? but without any further congressional involvement (contra the War Powers Resolution). The Constitution?s original grant of power to Congress was for a one-time authorization, with no further congressional constraint on executive war-making except, of course, through the power of the purse.

The Libya adventure is too much of a mess to expect mutual agreement on this kind of constitutional compromise now. Nor is Obama, having bollixed the war powers issue in every possible way, the man to negotiate this deal.

Resolution of this issue will require time, dispassion and therefore inevitably a commission ? say, chaired by a former president of each party, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and consisting of former legislators, judges and generals, with perhaps a couple of historians and not more than one international lawyer thrown in.

Then submit the commission?s proposed law for approval by Congress and the president. And have David McCullough read the final text aloud at the signing ceremony. That will make it official.

We need a set of rules governing the legality of any future war. This will allow us to concentrate on the most important question: its wisdom.


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