One day after seven GOP presidential hopefuls challenged each other over who would be least like Barrack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner issued a challenge directly to the president: get Congress’s authorization for his military deployment in Libya, or be in violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution.
This is no idle threat, nor is it just the Republicans who are steamed. On the 15th, a 10-member anti-war coalition led by Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich announced it was filing a lawsuit charging the president of making an illegal end run around Congress.
“With regard to the war in Libya, we believe that the law was violated,” said Kucinich. “We have asked the courts to move to protect the American people from the results of these illegal policies.”
June 19th marks the 90th day since Obama notified Congress that U.S. troops had been committed to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya, designed to protect rebels fighting Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s government.
“The Constitution requires the president to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’ and one of those laws is the War Powers Resolution, which requires an approving action by Congress or withdrawal within 90 days from the notification of a military operation,” said Boehner.
In response to Boehner’s lawsuit, the White House released a 38-page report defending the NATO-led operation by asserting “U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve U.S. ground troops”, while still acknowledging that the operation has cost $716 million in its first two months and will have cost $1.1 billion by September.
“We are acting lawfully,” said State Department legal advisor Harold Koh. “We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own. We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.”
The ethics of the situation might even have devolved into a debate about executive privilege, neatly sidestepping the question of whether or not American lives are being placed at risk for a pointless, unpopular war which may bankrupt this country, had not another group jumped on the bandwagon the very next day to oppose outside interference in the Arab world.
“The sides believe that the search for settling the situation in

the countries of the Middle East and North Africa should take place in the legal field and through political means,” said a joint declaration signed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao. “Outside forces should not interfere in internal processes in the countries of the region.”
The two presidents expressed concern over the situation in Libya at the urging of a third president who had been invited to attend the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Kazakhstan, which many suspect is intended to counterweight the United States in world affairs.
“I believe together we can reform the way the world is managed,” declared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the summit. “We can restore the tranquility of the world.”
He then addressed the leaders of Russia and Asia, asking “Have any of us used an atomic bomb against the defenseless citizens of any other country? Have any of our countries played a part in the creation of 9/11 under whose pretext Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded and more than one million people have been killed or wounded?”
Whether or not Ahmadinejad’s words ring true the result is a world shifting away from the United States, and a United States barely able to represent its own people. Anyone not aware of the details of this nationally and internationally important story was probably distracted by Weiner’s weiner, and to them I saw: grow up.