Congressman Ron Paul: Constitutional Problems with the Libyan War

Last week the moronic Obama Administration took the United States to war against Libya, without bothering to notify Congress, much less obtain a Constitutionally-mandated declaration of war. In the midst of our severe economic downturn, this "misadventure" has already cost us hundreds of millions of dollars, and we can be sure that the final price tag will be several times higher. Why did the US intervene in a civil war in a country that has neither attacked us nor poses a threat? We are told this was another "humanitarian intervention, like Clinton's 1999 war against Serbia, but as civilian victims of the US-led coalition bombing continue to add up, it is getting difficult to determine whether the problem we are creating on the ground is worse than the one we are trying to solve. Though the administration seems to be playing with semantics, calling this a "kinetic military action", let's be clear: This is a US act of war against Libya. Imposing a no-fly zone over the air space of a sovereign nation is an act of war, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates pointed out before the bombing began. That the administration hesitates to call this war, probably due to the troubling Constitutional implications, does not mean that it is one. Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution could not be clearer: "The power and obligation to declare war resides solely in the US Congress."