Column for March 24, 2011

Jesus said “You will soon hear about wars and threats of wars, but don't be afraid. These things will have to happen first, but that isn't the end.” (Matthew 24:6). That was true when it was first spoken; it is still true in today’s day and age. I constantly hear from various groups declaring that the end is near. One particular group is saying that May 21st of this year is going to be the end of the world and that they can prove it Biblically. Yeah, good luck with that one. There will be a lot of disappointed people on May 22nd when they are still here.

For several weeks now we have heard of wars and fighting, especially in northern Africa and the Middle East. It all seems rather orchestrated to me, though I am not much for conspiracy theories.

I was on a camping weekend outing with my son this past weekend, so I never got to hear the news that America had joined with France and England in the military actions in Libya until Sunday evening. I find it amazing that many of the same liberals who decried our use of the military in Iraq and Afghanistan suddenly find it to be acceptable to use the military when it is “their” President who is in power at the time. I love the hypocrisy.

Oddly enough, I find myself agreeing a lot (but not totally) with The Nation of Islam’s “Minister” Louis Farrakhan in his chastisement of America for our actions in Libya. He whined about how America is acting in an imperialistic fashion. He brought up the fact that we are supposedly helping the military efforts in Libya on humanitarian grounds and yet we as a nation never stood up for the humanitarian needs of Darfur or The Sudan. Though I truly dislike and distrust Farrakhan, he is exactly correct about the blatant hypocrisy on the part of America.

I was opposed to our involvement in Iraq for the simple reason that I believed that we should have had a formal declaration of war prior to the invasion of that country and that there was no compelling interest of American national security. I feel the same way about Libya. Barack Obama is getting criticism from a few within his own party, such as Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who contend that a declaration of war is necessary for the President to use military force. Kucinich has gone so far as to declare that President Obama has committed an impeachable offense by employing US military air strikes in the efforts against Libya. Kucinich, though consistent (since he railed against George W. Bush also) is very ignorant of the role of the President as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. The military is his to command, not that of Congress.

I was happy to see President Obama doing almost nothing while the Middle East was imploding. I was happy to see him on yet another vacation and not proposing our involvement in Egypt, Libya, or Tunisia. These are not our struggles and there are no compelling US interests there that would warrant our military’s involvement. Many on both the right and left wings of the political spectrum were criticizing Obama for his inaction. I was happy that he was inactive until now, since it meant he could not entangle us in yet a third wartime front.

Though I believe that Moammar Gadhafi is a whack job that needs to relinquish power in Libya, I also believe it is not the role of the United States to facilitate that power shift. Unlike our new Congresswoman Renee Ellmers, I don’t see any compelling reason for our involvement. I do agree with Mrs. Ellmers, however, when she said, “The President needs to let us know what the mission in Libya is, what goals he has for the mission and what the plan is to achieve those goals. We must have a sound political and military strategy for our action in Libya and that needs to be communicated to the American people.” So far, we have not seen anything that has been clearly so defined.

As I stated concerning Iraq years ago, whether we properly invaded Iraq or not was a moot point once we took the country. From that point forward, we had to follow through. We will most likely have the same hypocritical posture in Libya. I do believe that the violence in their nation is horrid, as it was in other nations. However, it is not our fight. We have more babies dying in the womb on a daily basis in our own nation than there are dissidents and soldiers dying in Libya. I do wish that we would focus more on our own nation’s problems than that of other nations.