The indispensable role played by the West in the defeat of Kaddafi

The military help by the U.S. and its NATO allies that enabled the rebels to take Tripoli, including drone strikes against Kaddafi’s defensive positions, is detailed by the New York Times. Of course NATO was operating under a mandate from the UN to do nothing more than protect civilians from Kaddafi. So the U.S.-NATO involvement has been illegal on its own terms.

And speaking of illegality, what happened to the Congress’ invocation of the War Powers Act and Speaker Boehner’s threat to cut off funds for the operation in Libya? The issue just disappeared. From the beginning, I said that the House Republican leaders were just going through the motions of stopping the administration’s unconstitutional actions in Libya. See this from March 20 and this from June 3. Also, even as I acknowledged on June 14 that maybe Boehner wasn’t just going through the motions, I wrote:

Furthermore, because I remember the empty, passive, detached look on the faces of Boehner and Cantor when they stood together at a press briefing at the beginning of the Libya operation, because I remember their total lack of concern over this senseless and lawless dispatch of U.S. forces into a civil war in a Muslim country that is none of our business, and because I remember that Boehner took no steps to invoke the War Powers Act until two weeks after the statutory 60 day period had lapsed, I will only believe that Boehner is serious about stopping the madness when I see it.

The verdict is in. He wasn’t serious about stopping it.

And what is the result of the Republicans’ passive acquiscence in Obama’s mad and illegal policy? Diana West writes:

With non-Constitutionally-US-supported anti-Qadaffi forces taking Tripoli today, it looks as if—to be as delicate as a NATO commander—the “flickers” of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah have won. In franker words, America’s jihadist allies, a significant presence among the Libyan “rebels,” are now rising to power in Libya. In more startling terms, the same people who fought with al Qaeda against Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan (and committed unreported atrocities in Libya), are now, thanks to the U.S. taxpayer, very likely about to run or at least help run a state with the ninth largest oil reserves in the world.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 22, 2011 09:10 AM | Send