Recently president Obama “authorized” a “limited military action” in Libya. He did this without approval from Congress, with no debate by Congress – In fact, we are not even sure he bothered to inform Congress. He announced that he was sending American fighting men and women into harm’s way via an audio recording released on Saturday from Brazil, where he is vacationing.
Even George Bush, who infamously involved the U.S. in two Middle Eastern wars (which Obama promised to end, but has instead escalated), did not send our brave men and women to face death without the approval of Congress. Obama has obviously claimed this power to be his and his alone. Perhaps we started down this slippery slope of unconstitutional, undeclared wars long ago under Truman, but Obama has done nothing to reverse this – In point of fact, he has worsened it.
Many will say that Libya’s dictator was slaughtering his people and that if we did not intervene, a catastrophe would have ensued. Perhaps so, but why then did we not intervene in Rwanda, where a genocide recently took place? Why are we not intervening in the Congo, where another African dictator is at this very moment slaughtering his people in a civil war?
Sadly, the answer again comes down to our foreign policy. The United States has tacit agreements to buy the oil from oppressive regimes across the Middle East, and those regimes then return those dollars to the U.S. by buying weapons, and by buying U.S. Treasuries. Thus Kissinger’s “petrodollar recycling” continues, and the U.S. Government and Military Industrial Complex can continue to expand the welfare-warfare state. But that has almost reached its limit.
Unfortunately for Obama, the crony capitalist system that brought both him and Bush to power has also sown the seeds of its own demise. The system is rotten to the core, over-burdened with special-interest regulations granting favored status to large corporate campaign donors and lobbyists. The sand clogging the job growth engine of small and medium-sized businesses shows no sign of being cleansed, instead more abrasive is ground into the gears.
Congress jawbones out both sides of its mouth, telling the enraged Tea Party what it wants to hear, while doing nothing. POTUS plays in the surf while the republic smolders. Exported inflation in the form of devalued dollars sends fractious nations into food riots, forcing us to deploy troops yet again to secure America’s energy resources.
That same inflation is gaining momentum on our shores. Very soon, we will enter the “crack up boom” promised us by Austrian economists, and assured to us by Keynesian money-printing fools. Unless massive change is enacted at all levels, this is a mathematical certainty.
The change that president Obama (and the Tea Party candidates) campaigned on is becoming more and more to be the exact opposite change that the American people were sold. If we continue down the path we are on, there is no doubt that the change promised us will become reality – not by his intent, but by the realities of economics, the outrage of Americans, and of the world.
Hi Dave –
Thanks for pointing out that Mr. Obama has gone one better than Mr. Bush on Libya.
But as someone pointed out, this might have something to do with the Libyan central bank..
Nice work, Mr. Narby!