From the Washington Times:
Crossing party lines to deliver a stunning rebuke to the commander in chief, the vast majority of the House voted Friday for resolutions telling President Obama he has broken the constitutional chain of authority by committing U.S. troops to the international military mission in Libya.
In two votes — on competing resolutions that amounted to legislative lectures of Mr. Obama — Congress escalated the brewing constitutional clash over whether he ignored the founding document’s grant of war powers by sending U.S. troops to aid in enforcing a no-fly zone and naval blockade of Libya…
The GOP resolution giving two weeks for Obama to explain fully what we are doing in Libya passed – the Democrat resolution calling for immediate withdrawal failed, but found 87 Republicans voting in favor of it, along with 61 Democrats. All in all, 91 Democrats voted for one or the other, or both. A stunning, bi-partisan rebuke to the President.
As I’ve said, the reason Obama finds himself in this fix is not because he ordered an intervention in Libya, but because he didn’t seek Congressional approval while at the same time intervening in a manner guaranteed to result in a stalemate. Had he got Congressional authorization then it would be at least a year before anyone in Congress could muster serious support for a withdrawal resolution…and had he intervened with sufficient force at the right time, it would have been over weeks ago, making resolutions for a withdrawal moot.
Our President simply does not understand politics, nor does he understand military operations. This maladroit intervention is going to hang ’round his neck like an albatross from now until the end of his term…which I hope will be January 20th, 2013. He did it all wrong, and now he’s losing support all down the line…because of his boneheaded actions, he’s now someone who is mistrusted in Congress in the use of executive authority, and that weakens him on the world stage. A terrible state of affairs for America to be in.
2012 just can’t get here fast enough.
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