On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 8:52 PM, Robert Naiman <[email protected]> wrote:
> During Clinton's bombing of Yugoslavia, a resolution endorsing the bombing > was defeated on the floor of the House in a tie vote, thanks to organizing > of Democrats by Kucinich. This helped pressure the Clinton Administration to > negotiate an end to the war. =============== Oh my, half of the bicameral guardians have gone missing: https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/featured_articles/990324Ewednesday.html Badly divided, the Senate voted on Tuesday night to support NATO air strikes against Yugoslav military targets. The vote, 58 to 41, approved a one-sentence resolution authorizing President Clinton to launch American bombing and missile attacks as part of NATO's efforts to end the crisis in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Sixteen Republicans joined all but 3 of the Senate's 45 Democrats in support of the measure. A bipartisan group of senators wrote the resolution's spare language on Tuesday afternoon after it became clear from meetings with Clinton's top national security advisers that an aerial assault was imminent. Throughout the day, senators from both parties expressed reservations about, or outright opposition to putting American pilots at risk and bombing a sovereign European nation. But with NATO's air attack seemingly inevitable, many Senate critics muted their protests and reluctantly closed ranks behind the administration's policy, which aims to halt a Yugoslav army offensive in Kosovo and force the Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, back to the peace table. > > During Obama's bombing of Libya, Boehner had to scramble to prevent the > passage by the House of a resolution sponsored by Kucinich that would have > compelled the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Instead, the House passed a > Boehner-crafted resolution that rebuked Obama for violating the War Powers > Resolution. ====================== Senate Passes Resolution Calling for No-Fly Zone Over Libya By Dan Friedman Updated: May 29, 2013 | 5:19 p.m. March 1, 2011 | 9:19 p.m. The Senate unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution on Tuesday calling for the United Nations Security Council to impose a no-fly zone over Libya and urged Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi to resign and allow a peaceful transition to democracy. The resolution, offered by Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., has no force of law. And its symbolic impact on U.S. posture toward Libya is uncertain. But the resolution puts the full Senate on record behind an aggressive posture and could bolster a growing number of calls for the United States—which has already sent warships carrying hundreds of Marines into the region—or its allies to take limited military steps in support of Libyans seeking to overthrow Qaddafi. Earlier on Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told lawmakers that all options to address the Libyan crisis are on the table. “There is a bipartisan consensus building to provide assistance to liberated areas of Libya and to work with our allies to enforce a no-fly zone," Kirk said in a statement. The resolution condemns "gross and systematic violations of human rights, including violent attacks on protesters demanding democratic reforms," by Qaddafi and urges him to "ensure civilian safety" and "guarantee access to human rights and humanitarian organizations." It also applauds a move by the U.N. Human Rights Council to recommend Libya's suspension from the council and calls for the U.N. General Assembly to vote in support of that step. Menendez has been a staunch critic of Libya's role in the 1988 bombing of Pam Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and Scotland's 2009 release of a Libyan convicted of playing a role in the bombing. Both the resolution and a Menendez statement issued on Tuesday reference Libya's acceptance of responsibility for the Pam Am bombing, which killed 270 people, including 189 U.S. citizens. > > Just a month or so ago, the House leadership maneuvered to block a > bipartisan amendment by Gibson and Welch to the defense appropriation - > which I think would have passed - to block U.S. arming of the Syrian rebels. > Instead, the House passed by voice vote a much weaker amendment that > prohibited funding for any military action in Syria that violated the War > Powers Resolution. > ========================== Merely legalistic hair-splitting over the WPR does nothing to alter the assumptions built into the current noise levels; namely, that the USG has any credibility whatsoever as regards the supposed justifiability of yet more violence in Syria or, for that matter, the DRC. Yet more evidence that"moral outrage" is a tired fig leaf in the geopolitics of which of the 57 varieties of machismo/authoritarianism will prevail in various regions of the planet in the 21st century. George Carlin was right. E. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
