Another blow to Obama’s dishonest “we aren’t fighting a war” in Libya assertion – from Post Politics:
The Defense Department decided in April to pay an extra $225 a month in “imminent danger pay” to service members who fly planes over Libya or serve on ships within 110 nautical miles of its shores.
That means the Pentagon has decided that troops in those places are “subject to the threat of physical harm or imminent danger because of civil insurrection, civil war, terrorism or wartime conditions.” There are no U.S. ground troops in Libya.
President Obama declared last week that the three-month-old Libyan campaign should not be considered “hostilities.” That word is important, because it’s used in the 1973 War Powers Resolution: Presidents must obtain congressional authorization within a certain period after sending U.S. forces “into hostilities.”…
In a nation of laws and courage, it would now be quite clear: Obama must get Congressional authorization or Congress must move articles of impeachment. Of course, we’ll likely get neither…there being little respect for law and not much courage in the American government these days.
The natural reaction to all this is to shrug it off but we really must not do that. A republic can only exist as long as the citizens feel themselves bound by laws of their own making. Just as soon as the citizens feel otherwise, dictatorship follows almost immediately. Ancient Rome was thick with laws prohibiting what Pompey and Caesar did – but by the time those two came along the laws had been so routinely violated (often to the applause of the people) that it was the most trivial of affairs for them to fight for mastery with only war as an arbiter of who won. If we let this sort of thing go on – this setting aside and/or making up of laws – by our politicians, there will eventually rise a complete disrespect of law, and then a dictator to rule a people no longer capable of ruling themselves.
Remember: I am in favor of intervention in Libya. I’m not saying this out of routine opposition to Obama. By intervening Obama, for once, did something he should have done (though he did it very badly). But Obama must obey the law – even a law as badly written as the War Powers Act (which was really written for no other purpose than to ensure that South Vietnam would be defeated). Laws can be stupid. Laws can be out of date. Laws can make things worse. A great deal of latitude is given to common sense in applying the laws. But as long as they are laws, they must be obeyed – only when they are properly, constitutionally altered or abolished can they be set aside.
I can’t emphasize enough how crucial this is to our future as a free people. Here is where we must draw the line. This is as clear a case as there can be. There is a law prohibiting the President from engaging in war beyond a date certain without Congressional approval. That date has passed – the War in Libya must end, or it must obtain Congressional approval. To do anything else puts at risk all that patriots have fought and died for.
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