Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Impeach Obama

The Libyan Itty-Bitty, Kind of, Sort of, Quasi War by Doug Bandow at NationalInterest.org

Many presidents have been lawyers. Barack Obama is one of the few to have been a constitutional law professor. But he is no less ready to violate the Constitution.

President Obama took the country into war against Libya without a declaration of war. He continues to bombard Libya contrary to the War Powers Resolution. He has compounded one of America’s stupidest wars by making it indisputably illegal.

Let's make it real simple. "Regime Change" = "War".

If one King decides another King shouldn't be on his throne, and sends his army to go kick him off his throne, then that's a war.

If the two King's can sit and settle a dispute between them, then maybe that isn't a war. Maybe that was just a 'border dispute' that can be resolved by the Kings. But when the King of one country says the only solution is for the King of the other country to be gone, and that there can't be peace short of that, then that's a war. Sending your armies to achieve "regime change" is a "war".

President Obama speaking at a press conference in Britain...

"I believe that we have built enough momentum that, as long as we sustain the course we are on, he (Gaddafi) will step down. Ultimately this is going to be a slow, steady process in which we are able to wear down the regime forces."

Mr Cameron added that there was no future for the country - which has seen two months of intense fighting between pro and anti-government forces - with Col Gaddafi in power, and he should step down.

"The president and I agree we should be turning up the heat in Libya," he said, adding that "all options" for intensifying the pressure on the regime were being considered. -- BBC News

The United States is at war with Libya. The war is illegal. There is no Declaration of War, even though Congress would certainly give one if President Obama asked Prime Minister Netanyahu to ask Congress to do so. The War Powers Act allows the President to engage in military action for the long period of 60 days, but then requires the President to either have withdrawn from the fighting or to have obtained Congressional approval for the action. Neither has happened.

The President of the United States has violated the law and the constitution, and done so in a way the founding fathers would have considered quite serious.

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
James Madison (Letters and Other Writings of James Madison)

This is why James Madison, as one of the primary authors of the US Constitution, was so careful to put the power of a Declaration of War clearly in the hands of the US Congress. This is not a small technicality that's being violated. This is one of the fundamental guarantees of freedom and liberty in this land being thrown away. The President is not to have the power to launch wars by himself. It takes a vote of the people's representatives in Congress. That's not a technicality, that's liberty. As the protesters chant, that is what democracy looks like. Well, in a real democracy it would take a referendum approved by the people to go to war. But, at the very least, that's what a republic should look like.

The President of the United States has begun an illegal war. Mr. Madison provided a remedy for that as well.

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Since Mr. Madison regarded war as the most dreaded threat to the public liberties that his generation has just fought and died to win, it does seem rather likely that he would regard a President launching an illegal war without the approval of Congress as an impeachable offense.

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