Looking deeper
Giambattista said:
Why do we even have laws or a Constitution if it can be so seriously and brazenly violated with no more than a shrug of the shoulders and saying "It's justified by precedent!" ???
A bit superficial a question, don't you think?
I mean, to look at it a little deeper—at least, as I see it—part of people's resistance to the steady stream of indictments Republicans and Tea Party activists hurl at Obama is found in the question, "Why now?"
Why is it that what a majority of Republicans have long accepted when it was Reagan, Bush, or Bush Jr., for instance, are somehow evil when it's Clinton or Obama? Many people feel that the objection is simply dishonest from the outset.
Are there constitutional questions about how the Obama administration conducts its business? Of course there are. But people are going to ward off that discussion as long as it sounds dishonest in its construction.
For instance, Libya. The technical questions pertaining to war powers are when American troops stopped participating in direct combat actions (e.g., launching rockets), and, indeed, what precedent says.
A brief survey of relevant information suggests that the congressional authorization of the invasion and occupation of
Panama isn't nearly so prominently advertised as its success. It's hard to find the actual authorization for that action, and Operation Promote Liberty—the occupation phase after toppling Noriega—continued until 1994. Indeed, in 2010, the United States had troops operating on the ground in Panama.
Should President George H. W. Bush have been impeached for the invasion? For his failure to maintain order in Panama during our occupation?
When people see the opposition suddenly complaining about the idea that the U.S. contribution to NATO is actually aimed toward accomplishing something good, it really is hard to forget what happened in Iraq. You know, when that opposition was on board.
And maybe that isn't you, specifically. But that is the context in which the question arises.
I can certainly see the legitimacy in the idea that the People would say, "You know what? No more." But the prospect that suddenly we're going to hold a president accountable for contributing something many people see as a good outcome, and in a way that no prior president has been held accountable, strikes many as opportunistic and political instead of legal and philosophical.
In other words, it seems this really isn't about the law, but, rather, the fact that some people just loathe President Obama for reasons that, generally, when they explain them, make no sense in the context of reality.
It's not that there isn't any legitimate question about how the U.S. goes about its warring ways. Rather, the problem with the question is its appearance of political motivation subsuming any real legal issue.
