Left and right agree that Obama’s Libyan adventure is a bad idea
By Ed Griffin-Nolan
Politics makes strange bedfellows, and this season none other than Ann Marie Buerkle and the Syracuse Peace Council have crawled into the same sack, this time on the right side of the question of the war in Libya. While they may have both come to their positions from very different angles, both Buerkle and the SPC insist on calling public attention to Barack Obama’s third war, one he probably wishes would go away.
Buerkle, the first-term Republican congresswoman from Onondaga Hill, criticized Obama for involving the U.S. military in the air strikes that initially drove Moammar Gaddafi’s forces back from the gates of Benghazi and now seem to be serving as the Air Force for an ever more fractious Libyan rebel force.
Since mid-March the United States has been involved in bombing and blockading Libya, under cover of a pair of United Nations resolutions that charge the Libyan leader with abusing his own people.
The resolutions also froze the assets of high-ranking Libyans and referred Gaddafi to the International Court of Justice to be investigated for war crimes. The United States has been joined with as many as 16 other countries on a mission that clearly is aimed at getting rid of the man who has ruled Libya since 1970.
Buerkle, who earlier this year spoke to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about prosecuting Libyan leader Gaddafi for his role in the Lockerbie bombing, says she is concerned that the current mission is unclear. While American policy seems to be aimed at forcing the overthrow of Gaddafi, the administration and the UN Security Council continue to hide behind the ever-thinning fig leaf that they are hurling tomahawk missiles at Gaddafi’s compound and dropping bombs on Tripoli merely as a means to protect Libyan civilians.
SPC staff organizer Andy Mager charges that the administration has “ignored {UN} statements that authorized involvement on the basis of protecting civilians, and is in fact going far beyond that.” So the only thing clear about the Libyan war, which has no end date or exit strategy in sight, is that its mission is unclear.
Buerkle also objects to the process the president used to involve us in this war. She believes he should have “come to the Congress and come to the American people.” In this she is on the side of the Constitution, which delegates war-mak ing powers to the president, and stands against every president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the last commanderin-chief to obtain a declaration of war from Congress before engaging in hostilities. The other two wars we are fighting, in Afghanistan and Iraq (both supported by Buerkle) were begun by President George W. Bush without a congressional declaration.
“We would agree with Ann Marie Buerkle”– Andy Mager of the Syracuse Peace Council
Mager echoes Buerkle’s concern about President Obama’s unilateral steps to involve us in another war. “It is particularly disappointing to see Obama, who was very critical of executive action under President Bush, in some ways strengthen the tradition of ignoring Congress. Obama has made up lots of justifications as to why this isn’t a war, but we would agree with Ann Marie Buerkle that only Congress has the power to declare war. Many wars since Vietnam have been fought without a declaration, but a war is a war whether you declare it or not.”Mager has been at the Peace Council for nearly 10 years, about as long as the war in Afghanistan has been going on. “There are striking parallels,” says the Westcott-area resident, “with how Bush strong-armed other nations into a coalition, then pre- tended as if this really was a serious coalition.” As if to punctuate his point, the Norwegian Defense Minister, Grethe Faremo, began in early May to warn that Norway would soon be reducing its Libyan exposure. Last week the French announced that their only aircraft carrier, the Charles De Gaulle, was being withdrawn from the Libyan theater for routine maintenance. Either the French are concerned about voiding the warship’s warranty, or this is the most poorly timed oil change in modern Mediterranean naval history.
Because of the bombing of Pan Am 103, Syracuse is the U.S. city that has suffered most at the hands of Moammar Gaddafi. There is no place where the celebration would be louder if he gets his walking papers or one of those tomahawks should find him at home. Yet in our town, icons of the far right and the far left, people who rarely find common ground, are already giving Obama a hard time on this one. Maybe, Mr. President, maybe it’s time to come home? Read Ed Griffin-Nolan’s award-winning commentary regularly in the Syracuse New Times. You can contact him at edgriffin@ twcny.rr.com.
