Comment & Debate
John Glaser. “Libya War is Legal, Because Technically We’re Not Involved.” AntiWar. June 15, 2011: “It’s a very difficult argument to get your head around. […] We’re not technically breaking the law, because in order to violate the War Powers Resolution you have to be at war, and all we’re doing is bombing another country. We’re not engaged in ‘hostilities’ since we’re only…bombing another country. Our aims our limited to the protection of civilians by the legally binding UN Resolution, despite the fact that we have officially changed the war aims to regime change.”
Glenn Greenwald. “The illegal war in Libya.” Salon. May 19th, 2011: “It was equally clear from the start that this Orwellian-named
“kinetic humanitarian action” was, in fact, a “war” in every sense, including the Constitutional sense, but that’s especially undeniable now. While the President, in his after-the-fact speech justifying the war, pledged that “broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake,” it is now clear that is exactly what is happening. “Regime change” quickly became the explicit goal. NATO has repeatedly sought to kill Gadaffi with bombs; one attack killed his youngest son and three grandchildren and almost killed his whole family including his wife, forcing them to flee to Tunisia. If sending your armed forces and its AC-130s and drones to another country to attack that country’s military and kill its leader isn’t a “war,” then nothing is.”
“Senator Joe Biden on the War Powers Act.” Professor Bainbridge. June 15th, 2011: “By Biden’s own test, accordingly, Obama must get Congressional approval of his Libyan adventure. Granted, Biden was highly critical of the War Powers Resolution. But he insisted on what he called ‘the sound constitutional principle that sustained hostilities should be based on affirmative and specific congressional approval.’ By any fair measure, Obama’s Libyan adventure is now a sustained use of force that Congress needs to approve or, preferably, disapprove.”
Conor Friedersdorf. “Obama Fails to Justify the Legality of War in Libya.” The Atlantic. June 16th, 2011: “The White House does acknowledge these facts: the total projected cost for Pentagon operations in Libya is $1.1 billion; the U.S. has so far spent roughly $750 million, more than $398 million on munitions alone; since March 31, when the White House said that operations had been handed off to NATO, more than 2,500 sorties have been flown by American pilots, including at least some ‘strike sorties’; unmanned American Predator drones are also flying missions over Libya to this day; the U.S. still provides nearly 70 percent of NATO’s intelligence capabilities and a majority of its refueling capability. Imagine that a country launched a series of bombing attacks on the US to force one of our presidents from office, and that a second country provided millions of dollars in munitions, fired missiles at our cities via unmanned drones, and refueled the planes of our primary attacker so that they could bomb us more frequently. Would anyone doubt whether that second country was at war with us? What if they insisted it was “non-kinetic military support?”