In Britain, if the Prime Minister is hit with a no confidence vote, the immediate response is a resignation and a call for elections. Barack Obama got a no confidence vote from the United States House of Representatives. What is more shocking is that over half of the Democratic Caucus voted against Obama. I am still doing some research, but I believe this is unprecedented. Even Nixon, at his worst, did not have this happen. There have been several times when congress was furious with a U.S. President. Democrats wanted to demand that George Bush surrender in Iraq and start withdrawing troops. But while they huffed and puffed about it, they never came close to passing this kind of resolution.
This is very damaging to Obama and potentially even more damaging to the United States of America. The problem is that the U.S. Congress just told the world that they do not trust Obama’s ability to make foreign policy decisions.
The War Powers Act was passed in 1973, over the veto of Richard Nixon. Every subsequent President has felt that the law was unconstitutional. However, prior to Obama, no President was willing to push the envelope far enough to bring this to a head. Some Presidents, particularly Bill Clinton, ordered troops into combat for long periods of time without consulting congress. Although Democrats like to pretend that George Bush conducted an illegal war, the opposite is true. Bush went to congress and received bi-partisan authorization for his efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Democrats made a lot of noise, but they never even tried to force a vote to withdraw that authorization.
Republicans are far more hesitant than Democrats to challenge a President with regard to the War Powers Act. That is because Republicans believe that partisanship should end at the nation’s borders. Challenging a President with regard to military actions has typically been the exclusive turf of the liberal Democrats. That is still true today, with Dennis Kucinich drafting a far stronger resolution than the one introduced by John Boehner. John Boehner may even have introduced his resolution as a last-ditch effort to allow Obama one last chance to avoid a constitutional challenge. The following article by the Christian Science Monitor is excellent:
No matter how this turns out, it is a serious blow to the Obama Presidency. He now has two choices. He can come to congress with hat in hand, or he is likely to be facing a serious and immediate constitutional crisis. It is hard to imagine the Supreme Court sitting this one out, and Obama may have more to fear from the liberal justices than the conservative justices. The implications are enormous if the War Powers Act is declared unconstitutional. If it is constitutional, the President just deliberately violated the constitution.
Other Presidents were far too smart to get boxed into this kind of corner. Instead, they reached out to congress and, without admitting the constitutionality of the War Powers Act, they yielded enough to keep congress happy. Obama has done the exact opposite. He publicly defied congress and said he did not want or need their approval. That angered people in both parties.
This was very unnecessary. Obama had support for what he was doing in Libya. He would have gotten more support from Republicans than from Democrats. They just wanted him to at least pretend to consult them. But Obama is so arrogant that he decided to just thumb his nose at congress.
Perhaps Obama will get lucky and take out Ghadafi within the next 14 days. But if I were advising Ghadafi, I would tell him that if he just hunkers down in the deepest bunker for two weeks Obama will have to quit. I think the odds of getting Ghadafi just went way down. The only exit strategy I can imagine is for Obama is to find some excuse to declare victory, give a great speech patting himself on the back, then quickly shut down combat operations. But if Ghadafi is still in power, that will be very difficult. Our NATO allies have to be furious with Obama.
The main stream media is ignoring this story, but that will change dramatically in a short period of time if congress invokes the War Powers Act and forces a constitutional crisis.
TDM
His immediate trial as a traitor to this country would suit lots of vets I think!