Ben Stein
The American Spectator
3/22/2011
Maybe I missed something, but wasn’t that The Constitution of the United States of America that we just laid to rest this weekend?
It was buried in a private ceremony by Mr. Barack Obama of Chicago as he silently signed America on to the One World Government some of us have been worried about for decades.
Look at it this way: Where did Mr. Obama get the authority to commit United States forces to war in Libya? There was no declaration of war. There was no authorizing resolution by Congress allowing money to be spent on a war against Col. Gaddafi. As far as I know, there was no meeting of Mr. Obama and top leaders of Congress to discuss the subject in even rough form, let alone detail. There was no lengthy buildup in which the Congress was “allowed” to express the people’s opinion on whether we want to be in a third concurrent war.
There was just a vote by the United Nations Security Council, a very far from unanimous vote, and suddenly, the President’s Secretary of State, Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton, solemnly announced that we were at war.
But, when did we amend the Constitution to declare that the United Nations had control over our military? When did we abolish the part of the Constitution that said Congress had the right to declare war? Now, I well know that in recent postwar conflicts, we don’t have declarations of war. But we have Congressional debates. We have funding votes. We have a sense of the Congress or some kind of resolution.
This time, zip. Nada. Nothing. Just France and the U.K. and Norway saying that it’s time to go to war, and off America goes to war. And off Mr. and Mrs. Obama go to a South American “fact finding” trip for the POTUS and a fun sightseeing junket for the Obama girls…
The article continues at The American Spectator.
Related: Kucinich quotes Obama’s past anti-war rhetoric to show his hypocrisy. Video at Freedom’s Lighthouse.
At Ace of Spades HQ, Obama never went to Congress on Libya because he never expected to have to…
…It’s quite simple. The President didn’t go to Congress because he never thought he’d need to go to Congress. Obama spent three weeks dithering and then almost a full week telegraphing his intent not to intervene. But when the time came to announce his decision, he flinched and made a last-second gut decision to go to war.
The decision to commit the United States to war wasn’t out of any sudden change of heart about the value of Libyan lives. Nor did the President suddenly discover U.S. national interests in North Africa. He did it because he was getting internationally embarrassed by the French and by Secretary Clinton. He did it because he was looking bad and after three and a half weeks of polling his numbers were looking worse.
So, having failed to make any effort at all to reach out to Congress on the issue because he never expected that he would have to and with his Brazil vacation imminent, there simply wasn’t any time left to get Congressional authorization. Yes, he could have gotten it, in the sense that I’m absolutely sure the votes are there. But it would have taken a few more days and not even the MBM could pretend that he was “leading” on the Libya issue at that point.
As for the Constitutional issue — should he have to go to Congress to commit the United States to war? — well, yes…
