Illegal "War" in Libya; Does the Constitution Matter Anymore

What too many of those who blather about the “justification” of our being in another undeclared “war” don’t seem to comprehend, or don’t care about, is that the question is not whether the president can form and then spout the words that makes his invasion of another sovereign country palatable; the question is whether the invasion without congressional declaration is lawful, plain and simple.  And, yes, presidents from Truman through Obama have committed our boys and girls to things that look and sound and kill like wars without a declaration by Congress, and all of those actions, by Democrat and Republican presidents, were and are illegal and unconstitutional.  And there is no legitimate doctrine of constitutional jurisprudence that proposes that some or any quantity of unconstitutionalism makes the next similar incident constitutional – unconstitutional acts are always unconstitutional.

The Framers debated whether the political decision of whether we should wage war should rest with the commander in chief, as was the case in England, or should rest with the legislative branch, and they purposely and knowingly chose the latter.  Whether we go to war = Congress; how it is to be waged once thus authorized = commander in chief.

Congresses for 60 years have abdicated their duties in that regard, and presidents for 60 years have been usurpers in that matter, and as a result, thousands of our children have been killed in illegal wars, and the usurpers and the abdicators are political murderers.

We must get out of Libya now, and not with the current shell game of wink-wink, nod-nod, “it’s really NATO.”  The supreme allied commander of NATO is an American admiral; the theater commander of this belligerence is an American general. 

We cannot convince the nations that we arrogantly, ethnocentrically believe it our mission on this Earth to liberate and to bring into the 21^st century of governance by a rule of law to follow us by breaking our own fundamental law.  We are perceived as hypocrites for that and for so many other things, and rightly so.

The question is not whether the world would be a better place without [Gaddafi, Assad, Mubarak, Saddam, pick your dictator] [some thought it would have been a better place without Bush!]; the question is the legitimacy of our actions.  “Take out Gaddafi,” Bill Bennett?  By what authority do we assassinate foreign leaders whom we don’t like?  We have not been given the authority to don the mantle of Crusader Rabbit of the Universe, and presidential invasions of other lands to “enlighten” them ushers in a new Dark Ages of corrupted constitutionalism.  The same so-called originalists and Tea Partiers who rhetorically ask for the authority in the Constitution for Obama’s tyranny about national health care issues should also eagerly and aggressively denounce his and other presidents’ unilateral international military adventurism.