Back to Basics

The last President to have taken part in actual combat left office nearly twenty years ago. It’s a little-remarked milestone buried amid a great deal of posturing by leaders who want to talk the talk without having walked the walk. Since then, we have gone from a draft dodger to a man who never had to bother dodging, a commentary on a generational shift from a period when military service was not alien to the Yale and Harvard campuses. Meanwhile, the country remains in a conflict without end.

Obama will complete his pullouts on a campaign schedule, but that will not end the war. You cannot end a war that you did not begin. The sustained conflict we are in did not begin when we entered Afghanistan or Iraq, it will not end just because we leave.

The Afghanistan victory lap is as much about disguising the ‘cut and run’ phase; as it is about reminding the folks in Virginia and Iowa that the man on television parachuted in, cut the throats of all of Osama’s guards, shot him in the face and then made a topical quip. Waving around Bin Laden’s head is a good way to distract them from the fact that the United States has lost the war in Afghanistan, that Obama’s own strategy there failed badly and cost numerous American and British lives, and that we are turning the country over to the Taliban.

Afghanistan and Iraq were part of a strategy for containing and draining the fever swamps of terrorism. That strategy failed for a variety of reasons, not the least of them being that we failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam. The Obama Administration alone managed to roll out a “hearts and minds” strategy and a brief push to intimidate the other side into coming to the negotiating table for a face-saving withdrawal. It’s almost a pity that Obama wasn’t old enough to have to dodged the draft. At least that way he might have actually known something about the Vietnam War.

Instead we have come away with thousands of casualties, living and dead, often left with poor medical care, at rates that this administration is determined to hike up. We have generals who don’t know how to win wars but know how to behave in mosques and female cadets from West Point are being dressed up in hijabs and taken to Jersey City so that they might learn how to relate to Muslim culture. And most of all the war isn’t over.

The enemy was never a few peasants in Afghanistan, beating their wives, growing their drug cash crops and murdering their daughters over a slight. They are bastards and they generally hate us, to the extent that they are aware of us, much as they hate their neighbors from a different ethnic group. But, left to their own devices, they would only be a threat to their own female relations. They are our enemies, but they are not the enemy.

Bin Laden didn’t come out of Afghanistan. He came out of Saudi Arabia, and he found refuge in Pakistan. And those are two countries that we would never think to touch, because the former owns us, and the latter has sizable numbers and nuclear weapons.

You may not have heard of PSD-10 because it has received no significant coverage from the major media. Yet, President Obama issued “Presidential Study Directive 10” last August 4, 2011, and posted it on the White House website. It amounts to a new and potentially far-reaching exercise of American military power cloaked in humanitarian language and conducted under the auspices of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.

Under this new “Obama doctrine,” U.S. troops can be deployed to arrest or even terminate individuals wanted by the International Criminal Court, which is based on a treaty that has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate and isn’t even up for Senate consideration.

This “Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities,” another name for PSD-10, declares that “Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.” This is at sharp variance with the traditional role of the U.S. military—self-defense and protection of the homeland. Toward this end, an “Interagency Atrocities Prevention Board” is being formed to develop and implement this new Obama doctrine. However, it is apparent that the doctrine is already going forward.

Members of the public haven’t heard of PSD-10, but they may have heard of a decision Obama made on October 14, 2011, when he informed Congress that he had authorized “a small number of combat equipped U.S. forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield.”

Kony, a Ugandan warlord who runs the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), is better known than most foreigners, since he is the subject of the viral “Kony 2012” video about the more than 30,000 “invisible children” he has allegedly murdered or abducted. His whereabouts are unknown, although it is believed he is no longer in Uganda.

Despite the name of his group, Kony is not a Christian and instead receives backing from the Islamic regime in northern Sudan. Although he poses no direct threat to the United States and has not carried out terrorist attacks on the U.S. or killed any American citizens, the Department of Treasury has designated him as a “global terrorist” under Executive Order 13224, a measure signed into law by President Bush after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In regard to seeking Kony’s “removal,” Obama told Congress, “I have directed this deployment, which is in the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States, pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct U.S. foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive.”

Obama noted that Congress, in passing the “Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009,” had “expressed support for increased, comprehensive U.S. efforts to help mitigate and eliminate the threat posed by the LRA to civilians and regional stability.” But it did not authorize deployment of combat forces. What’s more, a statement from Obama after signing the law did not give any indication any would be sent.

One of the sponsors of the bill, Rep. Edward Royce (R-CA), has subsequently introduced “Rewards for Justice” legislation (H.R. 4077) that would allow the State Department to offer a reward for the apprehension of Kony.

For his part, Obama is basically deploying the U.S.

With the War in Afghanistan dwindling in in the rear-view mirrors of an administration gunning for an exit in time for the election and a conflict in Syria cresting the hill just below the sunset, it may be time to revisit the just war.

Whether a war is just or not has nothing to do with multilateral approval. An unjust war can be approved of by a hundred nations. A just war may be entirely unilateral. International parliamentary procedures are a process and like all processes do not make a course of action just or unjust, they only make it legal under international law. Legal and just are not the same thing.

Czechoslovakia was carved up by the Nazis with the assent of most of the civilized nations of the day who agreed that it was the best thing to do for world peace. That wasn’t the last time such a thing happened and we keep witnessing repetitions of that horror over and over again.

International law is neither international nor law. It is not consistently applied, and therefore isn’t law. It is not international as the majority of the world does not subscribe to it, despite signing agreements to the contrary. What we call international law is not a judicial process, but a political one, an extension of existing international and national power structures which is selectively used to justify their actions.

And even if all these were true, process does not make right, it only achieves a consistent result or a consensus. It cannot tell you whether a course of action is right, only whether it came through the same sausage factory as every other decision did. The sausage factory process achieves a certain amount of consistency which is the next best thing to fairness, it does not however make a thing just.

A just war has nothing to do with multi lateralism or getting a vote through the UN Security Council where the butchers of Beijing rub shoulders with the pet representatives of Vlad the Impaler.

The wars we fight may be roughly divided into three categories.

1. Defensive wars – These are wars fought in response to an attack or a planned attack. They may be fought preemptively to deny a known enemy an advantage, whether it is a weapon or territory so long as it occurs within the context of an existing conflict, whether overt or covert.

2. Moral wars – Wars of aggression fought to prevent another nation from carrying out some unspeakable act such as genocide.

3. Interest wars – These are wars fought primarily to protect commercial interests, maintain regional stability, improve the position of an ally or otherwise alter the map in your favor.

Obviously there is a certain amount of overlap between these three types of conflict. Nations are run by people and people do things for complex reasons. Interest wars are often passed off as moral wars or defensive wars. Often wars have all three components with varying degrees of emphasis and sometimes one type of war turns into another type of war in the middle.

Most wars are primarily interest wars, because few leaders will launch a war from which there is nothing to gain.

Like a ship pulling away from shore, time brings distance to all events. No pain is as fresh ten or twenty years later as on the day it happened. The shock of the impossible becomes the new normal and then it becomes more background noise.

“A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic,” said Joseph Stalin. This is something that the statisticians in Berlin, Moscow, Tehran and Riyadh know quite well when they count up their numbers. But compound death is not a statistic, it is incomprehensible. The banality of the media coverage of September 11 reveals the struggle of grappling with a story too big to tell that can only be broken down into human fragments of personal stories.

This is true for most of the dark footprints of history. There is no story of the Holocaust, there are only countless personal stories of survivors and the procedural story of the Nazi killing machine. These perspectives never come together into a single story only human fragments and procedural details, the departments and mechanisms, how many milligrams of Zyklon B it takes per kilogram to kill a person and how many people can be loaded on a train in how much time.

The coverage of 9/11 breaks down into these same mini-stories, survivors describing how they escaped, the families of the dead relating how they reacted to the news, the stories of firefighters and officers, and the procedural questions, how long it takes a falling body to achieve terminal velocity and what happens to the human body when it breathes in enough ash and soot. On the other side are the killers who plotted and planned, checked flight schedules, got their boxcutters and their korans and killed thousands for Allah.

The story of the attacks cannot be told because there is no boundary to it. Where do we begin, with a handful of upper class Muslims in Hamburg? With a scion of the Bin Laden clan becoming a Ghazi or with Hassan Al-Banna finding inspiration in Third Reich propaganda to modernize Islamism? With the Gates of Vienna, the Shores of Tripoli or Mohammed in Mecca? All but the last are incomplete, and even the last leaves too much out.

When a murder happens we trace back the motives of the killer. Was he abused as a child, did the authorities fail to act in time, what made a once sweet faced smiling boy turn into a killer? To do the same for September 11 is to travel back over a thousand years and still come away with few answers except that sometimes human evil can be congealed into an ideology and passed along from generation to generation like a virus of hatred and cruelty.

“Where were you when the planes hit,” is an attempt to orient us in time. But the question is mostly insignificant, an attempt to make the impossible seem real. The businessman covered in ash and stumbling over the Brooklyn Bridge and the Seattle housewife waking up to see news coverage of it on television are more human fragments of a thing that is more than human. War.

Have you ever wondered aloud what we’re doing in Libya? Have you suggested to your friends that perhaps we shouldn’t put our soldiers under the command of unreliable nations whose motives for acting in Libya are unclear or outright hostile to our own? Do you think that the administration should comply with the War Powers Act and explain its actions to Congress so that our representatives can make informed decisions about funding our efforts there? Would you like a little clarity from President Obama on who we’re fighting for and against and what, if anything, constitutes victory?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, Hillary Clinton says you’re unpatriotic (via memeorandum).

QUESTION: It’s a good subject for the floor. (Laughter.) We’ve entered a situation in Libya that looks increasingly quagmire-like. And it’s starting to create a political headache for the Administration with Republican leaders arguing that the actions were inappropriate in the sense that they circumvented congressional approval for them. What is the – your vision for the endgame, a medium-term plan for U.S. involvement in Libya? And what do you make of House Speaker Boehner’s remarks?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, again, I am going to be testifying tomorrow at great length, probably longer than anyone cares to listen about all of these issues – Brad’s question, your question I’m sure will be fodder for the testimony. But I have to take issue with your underlying premise. I think that there is very clear progress being made in the organization and the operational ability of the opposition, the Transitional National Council, the military efforts on the ground. I don’t think there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind that Qadhafi and the people around him have their backs against the wall. The kind of support that we saw forthcoming for the Libyan opposition at the recent Libyan Contact Group meeting in Abu Dhabi was very heartening. Money is flowing, other support is available.

So I know we live in a hyper-information-centric world right now, and March seems like it’s a decade ago, but by my calendar, it’s only months. And in those months, we have seen an international coalition come together unprecedented between not only NATO, but Arab nations, the Arab League, and the United Nations. This is something that I don’t think anyone could have predicted, but it is a very strong signal as to what the world expects to have happen, and I say with all respect that the Congress is certainly free to raise any questions or objections, and I’m sure I will hear that tomorrow when I testify.

But the bottom line is, whose side are you on? Are you on Qadhafi’s side or are you on the side of the aspirations of the Libyan people and the international coalition that has been created to support them?

To say that Kucinich longs for the days of George W. Bush would be a wild over statement — after all, Kucinich wanted to impeach him — but maybe it’s not a stretch to say Dennis appreciated that Bush was more constitutionally considerate than the current president on the issue of congressional authorization for a conflict:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) on Thursday ripped President Obama while giving credit to former President George W. Bush for asking Congress to authorize the war in Iraq.

The anti-war Democrat, criticizing Obama’s handling of the conflict in Libya, noted that Bush formally consulted Congress on the Iraq war in 2002.

“President Bush came to Congress…President Obama doesn’t feel like he needs to come to Congress,” Kucinich said during an interview on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program. Kucinich pointed out he was strongly opposed to the Iraq war.

Along with other lawmakers, Kucinich this week filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration on the Libyan conflict, claiming the president violated the law by not securing congressional approval.

If he’s not careful, one of these mornings Dennis might wake up next to an olive pit.

President Obama continues to commit high crimes and misdemeanors by ignoring the rule of law while making a mockery of the U.S. Constitution.

The president’s latest impeachable offense involves his unilateral decision and order to fire more than 150 Tomahawk missiles into Libya in his failed attempt to oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

The initial missile attack was executed on March 18, more than 60 days ago.

Apparently, the President with the Law degree from Harvard overlooked (chose to ignore?) the provisions of the War Powers Resolution summarized below.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 (50 U.S.C. 1541-1548) is a federal law intended to check the power of the President in committing the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of Congress. The resolution was adopted in the form of a United States Congress joint resolution; this provides that the President can send U.S. armed forces into action abroad only by authorization of Congress or in case of “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”

The War Powers Resolution requires the President to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30 day withdrawal period, without an authorization of the use of military force or a declaration of war. The resolution was passed by two-thirds of Congress, overriding a presidential veto.

In ordering the missile attack, Obama was quoted as saying,

“I want the American people to know that the use of force is not our first choice and it’s not a choice I make lightly,” Obama said. “But we cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy.”

The obvious question: What about Iran and Syria, sir?

Back to Obama’s most recent impeachable offense.

As reported at the reference, Obama has decided to treat the War Powers Resolution with the same disdain he has shown for border security, enforcement of immigration laws, health care legislation, and other important issues:

In an effort to satisfy those arguing he needs to seek congressional authorization to continue US military activity in accordance with the War Powers Resolution, President Obama wrote a letter to congressional leaders this afternoon suggesting that the role is now so “limited” he does not need to seek congressional approval.

“Since April 4,” the president wrote, “U.S. participation has consisted of: (1) non-kinetic support to the NATO-led operation, including intelligence, logistical support, and search and rescue assistance; (2) aircraft that have assisted in the suppression and destruction of air defenses in support of the no-fly zone; and (3) since April 23, precision strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles against a limited set of clearly defined targets in support of the NATO-led coalition’s efforts.”

A senior administration official told ABC News that the letter is intended to describe “a narrow US effort that is intermittent and principally an effort to support to support the ongoing NATO-led and UN-authorized civilian support mission and no fly zone.”

Obama’s latest transgression makes clear his cynical mindset.

He’s getting hammered on this, and folks are talking about the introduction of ground troops. And Congress hasn’t authorized the deployment? Obama’s lame…

See Business Week, “Boehner Offers Libya Resolution Demanding Details on Objectives..” And New York Times, “House Sets Votes on Two Resolutions Critical of U.S. Role in Libyan Conflict“:

WASHINGTON — The House will vote Friday on two measures that are strongly critical of President Obama’s decision to maintain an American role in NATO operations in Libya, reflecting increasing disenchantment among elements of both parties about the United States’ involvement in the conflict.

The decision to put the resolutions to a vote came after Republican leaders earlier this week postponed consideration of one of them, which would direct the president to end American’s military involvement in the operations. It was sponsored by Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat who is one of the most liberal members of the House.

The leadership feared that the Kucinich measure would pass with backing from an unlikely coalition of liberals and conservatives, a step they contended would send the wrong message to allies engaged in other conflicts with the United States.

On Thursday, Speaker John A. Boehner took the unusual step of presenting his own resolution to his caucus to be voted on by the full House on Friday, along with the Kucinich measure.

If either or both were to pass, it would represent the most assertive stance by Congress to date on the Libya conflict and highlight the chronic tensions between the executive and legislative branches over the president’s ability to wage war without Congress’s express approval.

Amazing. The deadline for congressional authorization was May 20th. This is an illegal war without legislative action. Even President Bush got approval for Iraq. Boy, that’s some change.

Obama has violated both provisions of the law.

If you want an indication of why Republicans may lose to Obama in 2012, look at the pass they are giving him over his illegal war in Libya. Nothing is more important than committing a nation to war. The military intervention could be the basis of impeachment charges. But Republican leaders in the House—and Republican Senator John McCain in the Senate—don’t want to hold Obama accountable.

We have pointed out that the war is illegal and that the media—and now the House Republican leaders—have failed to acknowledge the facts.

On the other hand, there is growing media fascination with “Weinergate,” in which the Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner has obviously stonewalled about the origin and distribution of a lewd photo sent to a coed.

In contrast to the Weiner affair, the facts about Obama’s violations of the law and the Constitution are clear.

If Weiner should be held accountable for an embarrassing sexual matter, which may or may not result in his resignation, why not enforce the law and the Constitution when the president goes to war?

Columnist Ann Coulter jokes that the Weiner case should go to small claims court. Obama’s war in Libya is a matter of the highest constitutional importance and not a joking matter.

House leaders could bring impeachment charges. Instead, they want to avoid doing their duty.

The Wall Street Journal reports that “House Republican leaders on Wednesday abruptly canceled a vote on a resolution forcing U.S. withdrawal from Libya amid signs” that it would pass. House GOP leaders “fend off vote on Libya resolution,” the Washington Post proclaims.

“U.S. House leaders pulled a bill calling for the U.S. military to withdraw from Libya after a group of liberals and conservatives said they back the measure,” UPI noted.

In the Senate, McCain, who has turned into an advocate for Al-Jazeera, has been an enthusiastic supporter of the war, conducted with the approval of the Arab League and the United Nations but not Congress. Al-Jazeera, committed to the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region, openly backs the “pro-democracy fighters” in Libya, playing down their links to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, once a prime sponsor of anti-American terrorism, gave up his terrorist aims and nuclear program after the U.S. invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein in 2003. Gaddafi thought he might be the next target. Little did he know that he would be targeted by a liberal U.S. President enforcing a novel U.N. concept known as the “responsibility to protect.”

The evidence is overwhelming, even though most of the media will not cover it, that Obama’s war in Libya is illegal and unconstitutional. Columnist George Will got most of it right in a recent column, “Is Obama Above the Law?” The war is a violation of the War Powers Act, which says the president can go to war on his own only if there is an imminent threat to the U.S. and there is a 60-day deadline for the withdrawal of forces.

Obama has violated both provisions of the law.

This is from someone at Brookings attacking Obama’s policies. I still don’t understand why we are involved in Libya but not another country such as Syria, where soldiers are shooting into crowds and 120 are dead in just the last two days. The logic seems Ad Hoc.

“Deterring Qadhafi’s forces from moving forward doesn’t remove him from power, doesn’t create a functioning economy, doesn’t solve humanitarian problems of people being out of their homes, out of work — all of which comes from having this war drag on and on,” said Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution. “What gets totally lost here is you have hundreds of thousands of people displaced here — refugees … you’re losing economic opportunity, losing jobs, the educational system is breaking down, the whole infrastructure is coming under pressure.”

“The problem we face, is, having started this without evidently any clear plan as to what the outcome would be, we are everyday making this worse. These are not casual costs: When you don’t have medical services, you may not see people killed, but they’re dying,” Cordesman said. . . .

I will be interested in seeing what happens at the May 20th date. It seems to me that will be the crucial point in time for Obama with his base.

Under the War Powers Act, Obama is supposed to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from the Libya operation by May 20 if Congress has not authorized the mission. Presidents have generally complied with the notification requirement in the act, while contending the law is unconstitutional. . . .

Rand Paul has it right:

“I think it’s a big mistake and it’s a very bad precedent to allow a to be fought with no vote in Congress,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said at a policy luncheon this week in his home state. “Now, it also shows you the hypocrisy of the way politics goes. Many on the left criticized Bush to no end about the Iraq war. In fact, I wasn’t in favor of going to Iraq. But at the very least, Bush came to Congress and we voted before going to Afghanistan and Congress voted before going to Iraq.” . . .