To the group:
We seem to have sort of fallen over backwards into this war, and for many people it still seems like, at worst, not even quite of a Desert Storm caliber. But I am afraid this is much more than that. We are already in this for lots of international bad karma, and in part in spite of that, and in part because of that, the powers that be can't back down now.
I predict once again, and especially in light of Congress failing to approve the bombing, that we will see some sort of Pearl Harbor or Tonkin Gulf style attack which will make Congressional approval moot. There has already been a Federal suit filed to force Clinton to withdraw our troops because he neither has Congressional approval, nor has he met the conditions of the war powers act. He will (unless the situation changes) lose this suit. He would probably appeal on constitutional grounds and would probably lose the appeal as well unless the situation changes.
The president is constrained from committing American military forces to a conflict without Congressional approval unless at least one of only a few conditions exist:
An attack on American soil (not the case here)
A request for aid from an ally (certainly not the case here)
An attack on American citizens or military personnel abroad (whoops! Did somebody say "Lusitania?")
They might try a Saddam (you know, "We're gonna be flying a U-2 over you and you had better not shoot at it or..."), but since that didn't even work on Saddam I doubt they'll try that one again. I think it's more likely that we'll get either a Tonkin Gulf ("No really! They shot at us! Really they did!") or, unfortunately, a Beirut Marine barracks style attack. I would expect this administration to at least turn a blind eye to foreknowledge of an attack, much like Roosevelt did with Pearl Harbor, just to stir public support for this brouhaha and to conveniently activate the conditions of the war powers act and give the President the power to bypass Congress. And at this point I wouldn't even be surprised if they would bring about such an attack themselves if it served their purposes. (Yes Daniel, I really believe that and I don't particularly care what you think).
(Book)mark my words; before anyone even gets a chance to rule against this war, we will see some sort of attack on Americans that will be used as a pretext for bypassing the need for Congressional approval. And who knows, it might even stir up a little patriotic fervor.
At least, when it all blows up in our faces, there will be one person who will deserve all the blame. It's just a shame that that person will be the blameless Bill Clinton.
-BLT
P.S. Actually I keep waiting for the Administration to announce that they had come to the conclusion that this engagement was not in any way bringing about the desired results and that they had decided to declare at least a temporary cease-fire and were going to begin negotiations to bring this situation to some sort of conclusion. Oh, and that the President did have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. Well, and yes, he did give the Chinese military access to American missile technology (and possibly American nuclear missile computer code, but that's a whole new story) in exchange for campaign contributions. Okay, yes, and he did inhale, and then he held it, but then he coughed. And so on. And so on.
I guess that's just the naive idealist in me.
P.S.S. For those who are here in realtime; I'm obviously not that fast of a writer, this was originally an extended digression off of my most recent post that I felt worked better standing on it's own, so I only had to rewrite the intro. |
