Philip C. Restino Jr., OpEdNews
Twenty years ago after U.S. forces had driven the Iraqi military out of Kuwait and back into Iraq, President George H.W. Bush as Commander in Chief ordered the U.S. military to cease-fire on February 28, 1991. Years later, in his 1998 memoir “A World Transformed,” Bush admitted that the reason he chose to order the cease-fire was because he understood that advancing further into Iraq, a country that had not attacked the U.S., and overthrowing its government could easily be seen as an illegal war of aggression and thus warrant a call from the American people for his removal from office by the Constitutional remedy of impeachment. It was the fear of a call for impeachment by the American people that in effect stopped the President from continuing the war.
Since the Presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton during the 1990′s, which immediately followed the Presidency of Republican George H.W. Bush, the American people have allowed a practice of the President acting as a “unitary executive” unaccountable to the rule of law in ordering the U.S. military into unprovoked, illegal wars of aggression and occupation.
During the Presidency of Republican George W. Bush, attempts were made to even re-define the office of the Presidency as a “unitary executive” with literally dictatorial powers beyond the rule of law. Now, because the American people have still not spoken up, the current Presidency of Democrat Barack Obama has allowed the President of the United States to order young Americans to war without consulting the American people’s representatives in Congress or even having to concoct a lie about the U.S. facing a “justifiable” threat to its national security.
President Obama’s ordering of the March 19, 2011, attack on Libya, without even consulting Congress, let alone getting a Declaration of War or other type of Congressional approval for the attack, has led to a good amount of discussion as to how the President could very well be impeached for having unilaterally ordered such an attack. People from both ends of the political spectrum, to include members of Congress, have been quite clear in publicly stating that the President’s attack on Libya is not only an impeachable offense, as per Democrat Representative and 2008 Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich from Ohio, but it also makes him accountable for war crimes, as per Republican Representative and 2012 Presidential candidate Ron Paul from Texas.
Notable legal experts and scholars from both the left and the right, including former Democrat U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, former Republican Deputy U.S. Attorney General Bruce Fein, and Professor of Law Francis Boyle, have publicly offered their services to assist in carrying out impeachment proceedings against President Obama over his unconstitutional and otherwise illegal war on Libya to any member of Congress willing to step forward and introduce Articles of Impeachment.
Let us not forget that it was the former Constitutional Law Professor and U.S. Senator Barack H. Obama who said himself during a December 20, 2007, interview with the Boston Globe that “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
The sovereign nation of Libya posed no such threat whatsoever to the United States, and Obama’s ordering of more than 120 Cruise Missiles fired into Libya on just the first day of his own March 19 “Shock and Awe” is nothing less than another outright illegal U.S. war of aggression similar to the illegal U.S. war of aggression on Iraq launched eight years to the day prior — minus the land invasion — which is the next step in the process if the American people don’t draw the line and call for a stop to it now.
With such a clear-cut case for impeaching President Obama over his war on Libya, along with the legal experts and political figures ready to proceed with a call for impeachment, why has there not been a call from leaders of the national antiwar organizations for impeaching Obama? It is obvious that making such a call now could actually prevent him from going ahead with a land invasion into Libya, and even be enough of a threat to force him to finally end the 10-year U.S. wars and occupations by using his unique ability as Commander in Chief to order a cease-fire.
People involved in national antiwar organizations have told me that the issue of racism is a major factor in their failure to call for impeachment of President Obama for what amounts to the same crimes cited in their former calls for impeachment and present calls for prosecution of President George W. Bush over his war on Iraq. If calling for the impeachment of the first Black American U.S. President for prosecuting illegal wars of aggression is racist, then that first needs to be squared with all the brown-skinned people being killed under his command….
