The transformation of our current president into just another corporate tool is nearing completion. His foreign policy is virtually indistinguishable from that of his predecessor. Before you think I'm just another dickish Obama loather, I will tell you that I voted for the man. I believe his domestic policies are doing more for our citizenry than his opponents ever would have, and his reactions to events on the world stage appear to be far less knee-jerk than the grampa with anger management issues. However, I can't say there is much real difference between the foreign policy positions of either man.
The president has sojourned from alleged idealist to cynical technocrat in short order. That journey happened because the office of the presidency has become nothing less than a puppet theater, a gilded figurehead for the machinations of the oligarchs who own the military-industrial-banking-media revolving-door plutocratic-kleptocracy we laughingly call a republic. The President ran on a platform that repudiated the excesses of the Bush maladministration, yet he has maintained most of the failed policies of the Bush era and in some cases he has one-upped Bush. Our attack on Libya is nothing more than the Bush doctrine with active, as opposed to retroactive, U.N. support.
Our actions in Libya are as unconstitutional as our actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, or Korea. All of those conflicts had something in common, Congress never passed the declaration of war required by the Constitution. Although some supporters of the president cite the 1973 War Powers Act, which gives the president limited power to use military force without Congressional approval, I believe that act to be unconstitutional as well, and a gross rationalization for the abuses and unconstitutional aggregation of power by the executive branch of our government over the last fifty years. Others cite the U.N. charter that requires action by member states when civilians need protection from their own government. Again, I take issue with the demonstrably arbitrary application of Chapter VII of that charter.
If the U.N. is going to take military action in Libya to maintain peace and prevent civilian causalities, why wasn't there intervention in Sudan, or Rwanda, or Myanmar, or China after the Tiananmen Square massacre? Why are American allies (Yemen and Bahrain) allowed to massacre peaceful protesters, but Colonel Qaddafi is not given that same latitude? Our treatment of iron-fisted despots is hypocritical and incoherent at best. It is that unequal treatment that makes our involvement in Libya not only seem unwise, but arbitrary as well...
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