Qaddafi Soup

Muammar Qaddafi is a terrorist and he has been one from the day his regime began 40 years ago. He had his hands all over the Lockerbie Pam Am Flight 103 bombing in 1988, and we should have taken him out as soon as it occurred to us that he had a role in it.

When Qaddafi started clamping down on insurrectionists in his country, we attempted to strong-arm him into stepping aside by suggesting we might re-open the Lockerbie investigation and bring charges of crimes against humanity against him. The idea was that we had the goods on Qaddafi and if he didn't back away from defending his regime against the rebels, we would go after him in international court. That not only made us look weak, it showed us to be hypocrites in our outrage over the atrocity on Pan Am 103. How in the world do we withhold our vengeance over the murders of Americans over Lockerbie until - and only until - Qaddafi compounds the crime by killing his own people? That made us look so obviously unprincipled. I don't get it.

If we were going to re-open the Lockerbie investigation, we should have done it LONG before this latest unrest in Libya. Qaddafi read our weakness correctly. He didn't buy the not-so-veiled threat, and he didn't cave in. In fact, he ramped up his operations against his opponents until they were nearly on the ropes.

We continue to say he MUST step aside, but he hasn't. We put strong words out there, but everyone knows we're not going to commit the resources to seeing it through. Finally, when Qaddafi put aircraft in the air against his opponents, the Europeans took the initiative to limit his ability to do that. That's where the no-fly zone came from.

So finally, the President went to the UN to get a resolution for military action, but didn't go to our own Congress. We feel better about bombing Libya because the Arab League called for action, but we didn't check to see what our own Congress thought about it. To be clear, I think the War Powers Act might not survive a Constitutional challenge and I'd support a President testing those waters sometime. However, I will NEVER support the idea of a President consulting with everyone BUT our Congress. There's something wrong with that. Why is he playing the populist with the Europeans and the Arab League, but can't bring himself to take the issue to the people's House in his own country?

So, before the first Tomahawk missile took flight, Qaddafi took cover. He'll stay under cover until the bombings stop. In the meantime, his forces will continue to fight the rebels and he'll survive unless we get lucky and happen to drop a bomb in his pocket. If he lays low, he'll probably outlive our interest in the bombing campaign.

The reason we found Saddam Hussein in his hidie hole was because we had people on the ground blanketing the area. Still, they were lucky to find him. The reason we haven't found Osama bin Laden is because it doesn't matter how many people we put on the ground, there are endless places for him to hide. The reason Qaddafi will probably survive is that we won't go in after him. I don't want to put troops on the ground in Libya, but I think I'd like Qaddafi to wonder if we might. Why do we feel so compelled to tell him how far we're willing to go?

If we want to go after someone, I would rather we just did it rather than think up a reason to do it that we might never be willing to use again in a similar scenario. We have plenty of reason to go after him without it. If the reason we're bombing Libya is that Qaddafi is taking brutal military action against Libyan citizens, would we take the same action against Iran, the Sudan, Somalia, China, or North Korea?

I also think we need ask ourselves how far we would be willing to go in our own country if we were besieged by a highly effective, well-armed and organized insurrection here. Wouldn't we put our jets in the air and bomb our domestic enemies if that's what it took? I think - and hope - we would. Every federal political and military official in our country has sworn an oath "to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." What do we think that really means? Qaddafi's war with a mortal enemy is not the reason I would have used to go after him. We should remember it's been only 140 years since the Battle of Gettysburg in the Pennsylvania countryside.

We are now participating in a massive bombing campaign, but we say we're not doing it because we want regime change. Ironically, we're bombing him so he'll stop bombing his enemies. That logic doesn't sound entirely congruent. We want regime change, but we say we're not going to try to get regime change by bombing him. What?! That doesn't sound very congruent either. We can't seem to consistently define our principles, mission, or objectives.

Again, I don't have a problem with going after Qaddafi, but I don't agree with how and why we say we're doing it.

Final Exam

In December of 2008, George W. Bush was President, Barack Obama had just been elected President, and I was a high school Honors American Government teacher. I stumbled across the final examination I gave them just before Christmas break that year and thought I'd share it here. It seems relevant today in light of today's volatile international political and economic climate, and a national economic climate that includes a national debt that is 34% higher than it was in 2008.

My students did very well on the exam, but I wonder how their elected officials today would do on it.

Here it is:

Looking back to the collapse of the Roman Empire, Rome's economy had been declining for centuries. Rome had grown wealthy on the proceeds of its territorial expansion, but when expansion ended after Rome succeeded in bringing stability to its frontiers, this source of new wealth and economic growth also ended. Lacking new sources of income from expansion, manufacturing, expanding exports, and so on, Rome's capitalist economy contracted. In order to pay their armies and other costs of government, the emperors debased its coinage (diminished its true value by diluting its inherent value while maintaining that the coinage held the same value in the marketplace). To escape the resulting inflation, those who still had money invested in real estate, which, unlike the money at the time (because of debasing), held its value. Inflation and an overreaching tax burden ruined much of the middle class.

The Cato Institute (a free-market think tank) says that the emperors later "deliberately overtaxed the senatorial (or ruling) class in order to render it powerless. To do this, the emperors needed a powerful set of enforcers -- the imperial guard. Once the wealthy and powerful were no longer either rich or powerful, the poor had to pay the bills of the state. These bills included the payment of the imperial guard and the military troops at the empire's borders. Since the military and the imperial guard were absolutely essential, taxpayers had to be compelled to produce their pay. Workers had to be tied to their land. To escape the burden of tax, some small landowners sold themselves into slavery, since slaves didn't have to pay tax and freedom from taxes was more desirable than personal liberty. Since the Empire wasn't making money from the slaves, the Emperor Valens (368) declared it illegal to sell oneself into slavery."

Ultimately, Rome collapsed fully and Europe fell into the Dark Ages.

Roll the calendar forward 1,500 years to today. Times are difficult. As of December 3, the national debt was $10.6 trillion with $412 billion spent in 2008 on interest on the national debt. In 2008, we spent $700 billion on health and human services, $660 billion on social security, $640 billion on national defense, $61 billion on education, $60 billion on the Office of (Government) Personnel Management, $56 billion on transportation, and billions more on other items. Congress has a reputation for misspending the public's money on "pork barrel" items. Congressmen contend that since they represent their districts in Congress they need to send the budget money home to help their part of the country (which they would equate to doing their part to help the country).

The Brookings Institute (an independent research and policy institute) reports that fifty different governmental units share in the responsibility for planning and delivering aid to foreign countries with dozens of often overlapping broad objectives ranging from narcotics eradication to biodiversity preservation. The United States currently sends more than $100 billion overseas to the developing world in government and individual contributions. Major cornerstone industries in the U.S. are in jeopardy of collapse. The government is considering additional massive bailouts of these industries and businesses which will create a financial burden on your children and grandchildren, but they might also relieve pressure on the economy today. Everyday Americans and new businesses are having difficulty borrowing money because of faulty credit policies of the past. Fuel prices are unpredictable and we are at war to defeat terrorism and stabilize the world's largest oil producing region.

We haven't yet begun to sell ourselves into slavery, but there are undoubtedly difficult times ahead. The speed and complexity of communications and technology not only produce great things quickly, they also accelerate calamities and cause government action to ripple rapidly through the country (and the world), and not always with the desired effect. Events that once took centuries to occur in Ancient Roman times transpire in mere months and years today.

We need leadership now. We need it today. We need a leader who will be bold and will seize the initiative. We need a leader who can and will make difficult and maybe unpopular principled decisions. We need a leader who will break the mold of contemporary politics and establish a new benchmark in American history while holding onto this country's founding principles and the visionary values of the framers of our Constitution. We need a leader who realizes that these times require a standard bearer who possesses astounding moral courage: the willingness - the eagerness - to do the right thing at the right time for the right reasons. That leader is YOU.

In my capacity as your instructor, I have vested in you the power to fix it all and I have appointed the great Roman philosopher, orator, and statesman Cicero to be your chief of staff. His advice to you is the same as the advice he gave Roman leaders in 55 BC, "The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome (the U.S.) becomes bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

Your Assignment:

Write an essay reacting to Cicero's counsel in the context of current political and economic events in the United States using your knowledge of at least THREE of the Six Principles of the U.S. Constitution:

(1) Popular Sovereignty

(2) Limited Government

(3) Separation of Powers

(4) Checks and Balances

(5) Judicial Review

(6) Federalism