Come December, it'll be 70 years since Congress exercised its Constitutional responsibility to declare the United States to be at war.
Last night the United Nations authorized whosoever among its members to go and wage some kind of war against Libya. Today the President said we'd do something, sometime, but he didn't say what or when or with whom or where we expect to end up, or how we will know when we are done.
He says we are protecting civilians from the Libyan government. His secretary of state and the British Prime Minister say we are going to depose the Libyan leader.
Somewhere the prime minister of Italy is in the mix even though his country has a treaty that prohibits saying anything mean about Libya.
France is muddling about as well.
A week or so ago there was an estimate out that a nationwide Libyan no-fly zone could cost $300m a week to enforce.
Where will that come from? Given that the Arab league has endorsed it, and we sell lots and lots of jets and armament to them, will they be taking a lead?
What about the UK? They've somehow managed to build two aircraft carriers that are sitting with no airplanes.
Why do western powers assume that if there's a problem in the Middle East, we have to go fix it? If despots are bad, how do we decide which ones are friends and which ones we have to eliminate? Why no action in Darfur or Rwanda, but a war in the Balkans? North Korea? Myanmar?
Last night the United Nations authorized whosoever among its members to go and wage some kind of war against Libya. Today the President said we'd do something, sometime, but he didn't say what or when or with whom or where we expect to end up, or how we will know when we are done.
He says we are protecting civilians from the Libyan government. His secretary of state and the British Prime Minister say we are going to depose the Libyan leader.
Somewhere the prime minister of Italy is in the mix even though his country has a treaty that prohibits saying anything mean about Libya.
France is muddling about as well.
A week or so ago there was an estimate out that a nationwide Libyan no-fly zone could cost $300m a week to enforce.
Where will that come from? Given that the Arab league has endorsed it, and we sell lots and lots of jets and armament to them, will they be taking a lead?
What about the UK? They've somehow managed to build two aircraft carriers that are sitting with no airplanes.
Why do western powers assume that if there's a problem in the Middle East, we have to go fix it? If despots are bad, how do we decide which ones are friends and which ones we have to eliminate? Why no action in Darfur or Rwanda, but a war in the Balkans? North Korea? Myanmar?
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