Boehner's Libya Ultimatum
Speaker Boehner has the right target, but the wrong gun. The real problem with the Libya intervention is not the fact of the war, but its purposes. Obama has limited American intervention to the terms of the UN Security Council resolution, which aims to prevent harm to civilians. This dooms the war to a persistent civil war -- only when the U.S. and its allies decide to oust Gaddafi will the war come to a swift end. Simply demanding that the President make clear the war's objectives by Friday is not going to change Obama's meandering approach -- he can just send Congress a letter repeating his adherence to the U.N. Congress can only force a change toward a more aggressive strategy by refusing to fund the conflict unless Obama accelerates the pace of American action to force quick regime change in Libya.
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Re: Boehner's Libya Ultimatum
And then what? My real point of concern, setting the legal stuff aside, is what happens after Gaddafi is gone, not before...
May '11
Re: Boehner's Libya Ultimatum
I disagree, I think the fact of the war is the problem. Then again, I've never provided legal council to a sitting president. (...but the night is young!)
Nov '10
Re: Boehner's Libya Ultimatum
If the Gaddafi regime represents the starting point, ceteris paribus I'd take a gamble on regime change. The new regime could either be a whole lot better, or not much worse.
Edited on June 15, 2011 at 6:40amMar '11
Re: Boehner's Libya Ultimatum
I agree - the UK is running out of airplanes, trying to defeat a tinpot dictator. Congress should defund the kinetic military action, even though Mr Obama is leading from behind.
Re: Boehner's Libya Ultimatum
"[O]nly when the U.S. and its allies decide to oust Gaddafi will the war come to a swift end."
A swift end, John? What makes you so sure? The war has a pronounced tribal component. How do you know the removal of Gaddafi will end tribal struggles? I don't know very much about Libya, I confess, but does anyone? People as informed and intelligent as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney supposed we could achieve stability in Iraq in months rather than years, and just look what happened. How do you know Libya would prove different?
May '10
Re: Boehner's Libya Ultimatum
Is it too much to ask for a coherent explanation of why we're in Libya to begin with?
Because Ghadaffi is nasty? So are the leaders of Syria, Iran, and a long list of countries?
Who are these "rebels" we're providing air cover for?
Whoever/whatever follows Ghadaffi couldn't be worse? How about an Islamist state allied with Iran and Yement?
What do we stand to gain?
Finally, have we lost sight of the fact we're in two wars already? That as Mark Steyn puts it "we're the brokest country in history?"