A Republic

If You Can Keep It. America teeters back and forth between empire and republic. A constitutional republic has to follow the constitution. What that means keeps lawyers in business. What that does not mean, however, is that one guy called a President gets to take the whole country to war because he says so. Today the strangest bedfellows of disaffected alienated peace activists, catoesque libertarians, conservative republicans and a congressman (I am guessing an "R" ) on the Hill today, courtesy of Cato, met to discuss the constitutionality or lack thereof regarding the Libya air strikes and invasion. One panelist noted that Truman refused to call the Korean War a war, calling it instead an international police effort, and similarly offended the constitution. The congressman was more than a bit peaved that Obama thought he could take the US to war through international NATO treaty and UN fiat without congressional approval. This is not how it works in this Republic. The founders, he argued really did not want to create a country where a King could by fiat take the entire country at his whim or will to war. The War Powers Act, contrary to popular opinion does not give a President a window of 60 or 90 days to get Congressional approval- that time frame is not even invokable unless one of three conditions are first met to go to war -none of which have even purported to be the case in the libya scenario. One of the prongs is an imminent danger of attack on the US or its military forces. That was what all the pretext and made up nonsense about WMDs and yellow cake in Niger was about before Iraq. They were trying to create a pretext to go to War. Obama figured the country is too smart to be lied to again and his base wouldn't tolerate it so used the UN mandated humanitarian justification instead. On policy grounds some people are still with him because of how they percieve Khadaffi and his actions. Even some Republicans are still with him for attacking Libya. This Congressperson however is determined to give the President a wrist slapping for ignoring Congress before launching air strikes. Actions of a variety of punishments will be debated and efforts will be made to tie in cutting off funding with the new budget proposals that threaten to shut down the government by Friday. Empires go about the world starting aggressively military actions, bombing countries and taking out regimes. Republics have checks and balances- and are predicated on consent of the people. Obama did go to the Senate but not the House and Congress is bicameral. The House is Republican controlled so no wonder. Is it better to ask forgiveness than permission? And if it all works out in the end the way he wanted is the President going to care his wrist was slapped? Doubt it. There are BILLIONS of dollars of oil leases and frozen bank accounts now at stake, and the President might like some for his re-election campaign.