AFP photo
Three peas in a pod.
I have yet to write on Barack Obama’s War on Libya. This is because admittedly, I haven’t kept up with what Moammar has been up to these past many years and because I more or less wanted to see how things were going to pan out before making a comment.
But more and more, Barack Obama’s War on Libya seems like a Clintonesque “wag the dog” scenario, in which military action is meant to make Obama look like a bad-ass and/or give him some other political benefit at least as much as it’s meant to do any actual good.
And remember George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing,” a pathetic attempt to give the appearance that his Vietraq War had widespread global support, instead of the support pretty much only of Britain? Obama’s “coalition” against Moammar Ghadafi is almost as pathetic.
And war is always a great distraction, as the treasonous, unelected Bush regime knew fully well, although somehow when a Democratic president wages a war these days, the war doesn’t get very high ratings.
I don’t assert that Ghadafi is a great guy, but I have to agree with pundits’ assertion that Obama violated the U.S. Constitution when he took the U.S. to war (even an apparently minor war) without the approval of Congress. A president may take the nation to war without the approval of Congress only in cases of actual national self-defense. Obama said so himself in a presidential campaign questionnaire put before him by the Boston Globe in 2007 (this via Glenn Greenwald):
“The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
“As commander in chief, the president does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the president would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent.
“History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action.”
As Libya poses about as much of a threat to the United States as Iraq did before the Bush regime launched its illegal, immoral, unjust and unprovoked Vietraq War in March 2003, we can only conclude that Barack Obama has reneged on yet another campaign promise.
(Ironically, Obama’s answer to the abovementioned questionnaire’s last item included this gem: “[Every] president takes an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ The American people need to know where we stand on these issues before they entrust us with this responsibility – particularly at a time when our laws, our traditions and our Constitution have been repeatedly challenged by this [the Bush] administration.”)
Of course, this is the very same Barack Obama who also in 2007 promised, “If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I’ll walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States of America because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.”
Of course, Obama didn’t even send Vice President Joe Biden or another proxy to Battleground Wisconsin, but instead he left what is left of the labor movement (after Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush spent almost three decades dismantling it) on its own. Just like Bill Clinton would have done.
Barack Obama promised “hope” and “change,” at least implicitly promised that he was the next Howard Dean, the anti-Clinton (indeed, he was running against a Clinton in the drawn-out Democratic presidential primary season), but he is, for all intents and purposes, just another fucking Bill Clinton (at best), never missing an opportunity to sell out his base, which includes those of us who are against war except in clear-cut cases of national self-defense (and in limited instances otherwise — and only then with the consent of Congress) and who support the labor movement.
Barack Obama is dead to me, frankly. To me he is a sellout, just another fucking liar in Washington. However, unless he faces a strong challenger for the 2012 Democratic presidential nomination, just like it was with Bill Clinton, we most likely will be stuck with Obama — about whom, thus far, the only remarkable thing that history can record is that he was the first black president* — for another four more years.
Because Obama pretended to be another Howard Dean and thus inherited Dean’s base of support — without which Obama never would have made it to the White House — it seems to me that Howard Dean is the best candidate to try to knock Obama off of the presidential ballot in 2012. It seems to me that Dean’s former supporters — and they are legion — would prefer the real Dean to the cheap Dean knock-off that is Barack Obama.
At this point, however, I’ll support even a long shot, such as U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, over Barack Obama, who isn’t getting another fucking penny from me, and certainly never again will he get my vote.
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*And by itself, this just isn’t nearly fucking enough.
Robert's Virtual Soapbox 