[Hoot Gibson]

Hoot, Gaddafi was shelling his own people, entire cities! NATO was created to keep things like that from happening!

I know what you support and what you don't, I've paid attention, and on Iraq and Afghan we have agreed almost always. I'm not criticizing you for criticizing Pres. Obama and his admin for how they went about Libya, I am talking about the fact that you always talking about how the Dems try to make the Republican side look bad purposely by overstating certain events, over and over, when you are doing the same thing. You can't compare Pres. Bush going before congress to receive approval before "committing" troops to Iraq to our part in the conflict in Libya...we INVADED Libya, we staged hundreds of thousands of troops in Kuwait and the build-up took months. The conflict in Libya was alot faster, and the international community had to do something. He was ordered to stop shelling and killing his own people, he refused, so NATO stepped in. Not the U.S., NATO. Yes, U.S. units were under NATO command, but you can hardly call cruise missiles and airstrikes "at war with Libya". And it wasn't "NATO, mostly the U.S." that began airstrikes. It was as much the British and French as it was U.S., and if the U.S. did have more forces in the first few days/weeks than the Brits and French, it was because of our first-strike capabilities that are much bigger and better than any other country on earth. Pres. Obama made perfectly clear that we did not want to be involved in this and weren't to be involved in it for very long, and that was the case.

There is hardly anything comparable about the conflict in Libya and the war in Iraq, there just isn't.

Pres. Obama would have surely went before Congress for approval if he would've had the time. If you remember, this was a conflict that was getting worse day by day, and something needed to be done. You are acting like we were in it alone or something...the British and French were easily the top players in this and in wanting to intervene in Libya, not the United States.

When the Japanese launched air strikes against Pearl Harbor, we were at war with Japan. NATO was not created to settle civil wars and overthrow governments around the world. It was created as a counterbalance to the military force of the Soviet Union. It has been repurposed following the collapse of the Soviet Union to keep it relevant, but operations like the one in Libya are outside of the scope of its original mission.

The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, famously stated the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down". - Wikipedia

The War Powers Act did not require President Obama to go before Congress for approval before using military force against Libya. It required him to do so within 60 days of the onset of hostilities. Surely, Obama could have taken enough time out of his busy schedule to go to Congress at some time during those 60 days after hostilities began, if he was too busy to do so beforehand.

More than 70 percent of member defense expendures on NATO come from the US, so when our president, whether it be Bush or Obama, says that a campaign will be conducted by NATO, it means that most of the cost will be borne by US taxpayers. In this case, the UK and France's national interests (mostly Libyan oil and their citizens employed in the oil industry) were clearly more at stake than ours. But, the French and British, as you point out, have historically been among our strongest allies, so we could not have very well said no if we expect them to participate in future operations that do involve our own national interests.

All Obama had to do was follow the law, which he took an oath to do. Very few Republicans would have turned their back on the British or French (especially the British), considering the support that they have provided to this country in other areas of the world in the past. The fact that Obama refused to follow the law and obtain Congress's approval in accordance with the law and past precedent - when their answer would almost certainly have been "yes," should concern every American.