Allow me to introduce myself, my name is very bad grammar and tortured English. I am American! Proud to call the loss of personal Freedom and Liberty, ‘Homeland Security;’ very proud to participate in the ‘Patriot Act’ and wave our blood-soaked star-spangled banner at every Illegal war we wage; prouder still to refer to the millions of civilians we have murdered in Korea, Indo-China, Central Asia and Africa, as ‘Collateral Damage;’ extremely proud of our legal system which maintains its integrity by allowing our agencies and military to ‘Waterboard’ instead of Torture; and very tolerant of strangers touching my genitals in order to ‘Keep me Safe.’ Perhaps I could sum it all up by simply stating we live in our own private asylum for the criminally insane called the United States of America!
The only people we are kidding is ourselves; our pathological denial allows us to pay scant regard to the REALITY that our actions have resulted in our nation achieving Pariah Status. The glaring fact that we have become such vile, reprehensible CRIMINALS allows us to retreat further into delusional insanity and psychological isolationism. The course we have chosen guarantees a predictable outcome and ruinous future – ‘Home of the Slave, Land of the Flea;’ come, sing along with me:
Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
etcetera …
O, how the mighty have fallen!
by Stephen M. Walt via gan 2011-06-17 23:53:25
An accountant, a social scientist and a lawyer are seated in a room. A guy walks in and asks them: "how much is 2 + 2?" The accountant whips out a calculator, pencils and paper, scribbles for awhile, and then says: "The answer, sir, is 4." The social scientist grabs her laptop, fires it up a few minutes, and then says "Well, as you know this is not an exact science, but I can say with a 95% level of confidence that the answer is between 3 and 5."
The lawyer, meanwhile, gets up, looks under all the chairs, checks in the closet, opens the door to the room and looks both ways down the hall. Then he comes back, sidles up to the guy who asked the question, and whispers:
"I don't care. How much do you want it to be?"
I mention this because I learned that the Obama administration is claiming that it doesn't need congressional authorization for its Libyan intervention under the War Powers Act. Why? Because what we are doing doesn't amount to "full-blown" hostilities.
Oh, please. Let's start with the definition of "war" itself. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as "a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country." Now, let's see: what are we doing in Libya? What we know is that we've sent cruise missiles, and drones and U.S. aircraft to attack military targets in various places, including several attacks on Qaddafi's own compound. We are continuing to provide targeting information to our NATO allies, who are conducting additional raids on their own. Although U.S. ground troops are not present in force, it's a safe bet that U.S. special forces are operating in various places, probably helping provide some of that targeting info. And of course because the Obama administration isn't telling us everything that it's doing, we have no clear way of knowing exactly how involved we really are.
By any reasonable, common-sense standard, in short, we are at war. It doesn't matter that we aren't using our full strength to help the rebels or that other states are doing more than we are. The plain fact is that the United States is using its military forces and intelligence capabilities to attack Libyan forces. In plain English, we are killing (or helping to kill) Qaddafi loyalists (and occasionally innocent civilians), in an openly-acknowledged campaign to drive him from power. Sounds like war to me, and to anybody else who isn't being paid to find ways to evade or obscure reality.
Reasonable people can disagree about whether this war makes strategic sense or not. (I think not, but I can see the merits of the other side's case). They can also disagree about whether outside intervention was necessary to avert an anticipated "bloodbath" in Benghazi, or whether it was really a precipitous decision that may in the end make things worse. But let's not fall for the creative legal sophistry being offered up here. If Obama and his foreign policy team think this war (yes, war) is really in our interest, then they should make their case to the American people and their elected representatives and let the chips fall where they may. I don't have enormous respect for Congress (who could, these days?) but that's how a republic is supposed to operate. And let's not forget that Obama used to think so himself.
Postscript:
Lest readers think that I'm ticked off because I'm jet-lagged, or because my trip is not going well, let me just say that I'm feeling perfectly fine, the weather here in Dublin is sensational and my Irish hosts at the IIEA couldn't have been more gracious. I'm just disappointed, but not for the first time.
© 2011 The Slate Group, LLC
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/06/16/obama_were_at_war_stop_insulting_us