Obama’s Only Defense

President Obama has, despite the efforts of the MSM to keep things quiet, managed to rile up a strong and growing storm of condemnation over his usurpation of power and arguably illegal war in Libya.

Obama’s defense of his violation of US law and even the War Powers Act, which gives the POTUS certain limited leeway in using force without prior congressional approval, seems to center upon the war in Libya being a UN mandated action that is being conducted under the auspices of NATO.

Obama - Uh ... What They Said
The UN Made Me Do It. I was Only Following Orders

The only other possibility is that Obama is attempting the Whoopi Defense – It’s not war-war, much like it wasn’t rape-rape in the case of Roman Polanski drugging and rutting into an unconscious 13 year-old girl.

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Libya – How Long Again?

A lot of Americans wonder how long the US military will be involved in trying to decide the outcome of the civil war in Libya. Sadly, it appears that the Obama Regime cannot or will not answer that question. Indeed, they are not even willing to speculate upon the potential range of dates involved – Days? Weeks? Months? Years?

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday that nobody has “any idea” how long the United States military could be involved in Libya, though he stressed that Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi’s forces have been crippled by U.S.-led airstrikes.

Asked whether he expects the mission to be over by year’s end, Gates said, “I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that.”

Gates discussed the intervention over the course of several interviews Sunday alongside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. While he declined to give any estimates for how long the United States could be involved, the two officials stressed that significant gains have been made and NATO is taking on a much bigger role.

That makes more than a little sense actually. One would have to have decided upon a set of victory conditions before one could even begin to predict how long it will take to achieve them or have it proved that they cannot be achieved. There’s no visible signs that either the Obama Regime or the UN Security Council has defined those victory conditions.

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Libya – Israel’s Pain

Looking at what is happening in Libya right now brings an odd, but not entirely unpleasant, thought to my mind. The thought is that prosecuting UNSCR 1973 is going to give Mu’ammar Qaddafi, President Obama, and whole bunch of other people a small, but still bitter, taste of the pain that Israel suffers every single day.

UNSCR 1973, alongside calling for a “No-Fly Zone,” demands the protection of civilians:

Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory, and requests the Member States concerned to inform the Secretary-General immediately of the measures they take pursuant to the authorization conferred by this paragraph which shall be immediately reported to the Security Council

Old Mu’ammar Qaddafi, Libya’s more than slightly deranged dictator, is fighting a civil war against rebel forces in Libya’s eastern provinces. These insurrectionists wear no uniforms or identifying badges and fight from within urban zones with concentrated “civilian” populations, blending with those populations.

Obama and the coalition forces, required to use only air and sea assets, are trying to disable Qaddafi’s air assets and his heavy weapons capabilities. Sadly for them, many of these assets are mobile and Qaddafi has shown no hesitation in moving them into civilian areas and using his civilian population as human shields against airstrikes or missile strikes. Qaddafi has also seemingly shown no hesitation in moving civilians into his fixed military installations, again to use them as human shields.

It’s ironic and a little pleasant – schadenfreude is a fact of life – to see Israel’s enemies facing the same problems that Israel has been faced with daily for the last half century or so as they’ve fought a war against the Islamist Terrorists of Hamas and Fatah who refuse to wear uniforms, fight from densely populated urban areas, and regularly make use of civilians as human shields.

Obviously Qaddafi will be branded a war criminal. What, if anything, will Obama be labeled though? He’s no more or less guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity than his predecessor President George W. Bush was and many decry him as a war criminal and seek to prosecute him for those supposed crimes.

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Libya – Looking Back

On Thursday, March 17, 2011, acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which provides for the use of force if deemed to be needed by the UNSC, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted Resolution 1973.

President Obama promptly gave the orders for American forces in the region to begin attacking Mu’ammar Qaddafi’s loyalists in Libya.

This is not a course of action that, at first pass, makes a great deal of sense to me. It makes even less sense to me when I look back to the start of Obama’s campaign for the Presidency of America.

It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)
Candidacy Announcement, February 10, 2007

This is not like Obama’s reversing his decisions about Gitmo and Military Commissions; that was bowing with some small grace to necessity. Having his regime’s UNSC delegate vote in favor of Resolution 1973 was an unforced act.

So what, if anything, changed? Why has Obama committed our forces to a type of war that he previously stated he believed could not be won?

I think Americans require an answer to that question before we get too much further into the 2012 Election season.

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