{"id":431,"date":"2011-03-24T11:12:28","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T17:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=431"},"modified":"2011-03-24T11:12:28","modified_gmt":"2011-03-24T17:12:28","slug":"libya-and-the-imperial-presidency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/libya-and-the-imperial-presidency-431.htm","title":{"rendered":"Libya and the Imperial Presidency"},"content":{"rendered":"

I usually don\u2019t comment on political developments, as I have an extremely low opinion of all (or almost all) politicians.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

One hopes that politicians know what they are doing; I know that a lot of information from sensitive sources can\u2019t be divulged to the public without risking informants\u2019 lives and American security.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

BUT<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

One does have to wonder what Obama is up to. Apparently Hilary persuaded him to take military action in Libya to prevent a massacre. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Obama delayed and decided to take action at last moment, not leaving any time to consult Congress, much less get its approval. Why couldn\u2019t France and England handle it alone?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Allies may have temporarily prevented a massacre, but without ground troops in Libya how are they going to prevent one indefinitely? Rifles and machine guns can kill people just as well as tanks and artillery can, and it is hard to pick off riflemen and machine gunners with fighter-bombers.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If Kaddafi is left in power, he will make life miserable for the rest of the world. All Obama will have accomplished is killing some of his soldiers, but not enough to make any long-term difference.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I hope Obama knows what he is doing, but he is giving everyone the impression he is reacting moment-by-moment, and does not have a long-range plan or an exit strategy.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

American presidents are largely constrained by outside forces, military and economic, and do not act all that differently, whatever their campaign promises or the expectations they raised among their supporters. Obama contuse the war in Afghanistan, continues the prison at Guantanamo. And now has entered another war in Libya without congressional approval. The difference from Bush is not visible to the naked eye.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I usually don\u2019t comment on political developments, as I have an extremely low opinion of all (or almost all) politicians. \u00a0 One hopes that politicians know what they are doing; I know that a lot of information from sensitive sources can\u2019t be divulged to the public without risking informants\u2019 lives and American security. \u00a0 BUT […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[507,506,226],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war","tag-imperial-presdency","tag-libya","tag-obama","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}