PROCÈS-VERBAL

During the ramp up, the rhetoric surrounding Qadhafi and his violent crackdown on protesters was bad enough. While I’m not even thinking about defending some of his actions, the rhetoric was demonic. Qadhafi is no worse than the al-Khalifa royal family in Bahrain, the al-Sauds, Bashar al-Assad in Syria or the regime in Khartoum. Unfortunately for him, Qadhafi had Lockerbie in his past and that sealed his fate.

While I reading that more and more Americans are having trouble with the White House’s actions regarding Libya, and while I have definite opinions about the War Powers Resolution (which I’ve been fairly strident about), this post is about the diplomatic and human fallout.
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Well. I hate love to say I told you so, but yes, this is what I predicted over a month ago.

Today, Colum Lynch reports on the UN Security Council’s attitude toward Syria, and they aren’t in the mood to listen to the interventionist bloc at the moment:

The current dispute over Syria “is the hang over from Libya,” one council diplomat told Turtle Bay. “China and Russia feel a bit betrayed because the coalition went further than what was in the resolution. It diminished the possibility of replicating the Libya model in Yemen and Syria,” where Russia and China have blocked action.

(Emphasis mine)

Not that I’m calling for another bombing campaign, I’m most definitely not, but this is real fallout for overreaching in Libya. The mission approved by the Security Council was civilian protection, as established by international norm. Regime change was unilateral.
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Well, if you didn’t believe me when I posted Regime Change is the Official Coalition Goal, here you go. The road we started down when we first decided to intervene has now reached it’s logical conclusion.

Well. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? Does anyone remember when this was billed to us, the UN and the world as a no-fly zone?

Published in three newspapers, Presidents Obama, Sarkozy and Prime Minister Cameron have now publicly admit what many believed (me included) was always their agenda.

Actually, there was no “road” as I’ve described it here. We arrived at this destination in the first two weeks of March, and this is where we’ve remained ever since.
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Former Pennsylvania congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) leads a small, private delegation to meet with Moammar Gadhafi. Politico reports that congressman Weldon will urge Gadhafi to step down:

“We must engage face-to-face with Colonel Qaddafi and persuade him to leave, as my delegation hopes to do,” writes Weldon, who says he is in Libya at the invitation of Qadhafi’s chief of staff.

“I’ve met him enough times to know that it will be very hard to simply bomb him into submission,” he writes. Weldon first met with Qadhafi as part of a 2004 congressional delegation and has visited Libya twice since then before this visit.

The Obama administration and members of Congress from both parties, he writes, have “knowledge” of the mission. The State Department did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

Also reported on CNN and Jordan Fabian, blogging for The Hill.
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Pastor Terry Jones’ desecration of a holy text and the violent reaction it spawned are but some of the long series of acts of violence and hatred which have been acted out worldwide. The recent history of US military and diplomatic choices in the past twenty years have in no way accomplished any purpose but has ensured that the incidence of violence worldwide will continue to rise for at least twenty more years, and more likely thirty or forty, and quite possibly indefinitely.

With our voluntary involvement in the internal affairs of Libya, it is time to take note of the consequences of our decisions and our actions. To bring them right to the front of the discussion. Indeed, from my perspective, continuing along our current trajectory while knowing what we now know is as criminal as any outrages committed by any authoritarian ruler.

The time to choose a different road is now.

Just to make myself clear, I’m going to refrain from getting into a “who started it” discussion and won’t acknowledge comments attempting to make this kind of point. With the stakes being what they are, I think we all need to restrain ourselves from assigning guilt and seeking retribution.

All that is moot at this point.
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Reported in the NYT: C.I.A. in Libya Aiding Rebels, U.S. Officials Say:

The Central Intelligence Agency has inserted clandestine operatives into Libya to gather intelligence for military airstrikes and make contacts with rebels battling Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, according to American officials.

While President Obama has insisted that no American ground troops join in the Libyan campaign, small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks and are part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help set back Colonel Qaddafi’s military, the officials said.

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I’ve heard lots of conflicting claims made here about what the president did or didn’t do concerning Congress’ and the President’s prerogatives and responsibilities when it comes to sending US military forces into harm’s way.

I’ve seen many comments and a few diaries concerning Dennis Kucinich and his claim that Congress needs to be brought in when the White House and Pentagon deploys forces.

My view is that he has a valid point. History shows us that like the concept of humanitarian intervention, like the War Powers Resolution of 1973, is ripe for abuse, and has in fact been abused this way more often than not. Again, exactly in the same way that humanitarian concerns are cited in every public ramp up prior to going to war.

I’m not so eager to give the President the benefit of the doubt here. Politics should stop at the water’s edge and frankly, people’s lives are put at risk. Not only our own military personnel, but the lives of innocent Libyans. This is a time to stick to the facts as best we know them, revise our conclusions as new facts become known, and judge accordingly.

Regardless of my disappointments on the President’s performance and choices, I’m prepared to give him credit for helping save lives in Benghazi, and for going about it in the manner this administration accomplished this: giving the requirements of diplomacy and international law their just due.

However the constitution is silent on whether congress has the power to delegate it’s responsibilities as the WPR implies or whether the President’s authority over the armed forces and their deployments is absolute. The WPR was an attempt to define this more clearly, but as I will illustrate, is far from perfect.
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