Lugar, who is up for reelection, wrote a letter to Kerry demanding immediate hearings on the United States’ involvement in Libya. “I believe hearings not only would provide some important answers to Senators and to the American people,” he wrote, “they would induce the Obama Administration to conduct in-depth contingency planning that does not seem to have occurred.”
Lack of Support for Move into Libya
Obama has also drawn criticism from the Democratic quarters of Congress. Where Obama defined the no-fly zones as necessary evils to prevent Gaddafi from continuing to murder his own people -- who had organized to protest the authoritarian leader’s human rights violations and despotic rule -- Congressional Democrats worry that the aim might be to remove Gaddafi from power, which could result in an occupation reminiscent of Bush’s forays into Iraq.
The issue is further complicated by the morphing of initially peaceful protests into civil war. Analysts say it’s become impossible to determine precisely who the “civilians” are in Libya, as many of them have taken up arms. Rumors that NATO coalition forces are operating under the ulterior motive of displacing Gaddafi have also fueled the concerns.
Senator Kerry, continuing to defend Obama’s actions, said that he has never been told that removing Gaddafi from power was part of the mission, although “he [Gaddafi] ought to go.”
Obama’s Decisions Attributed to Nicotine Withdrawal
Carlisle Olden-Whitely, chairman of San Narciso’s foremost conservative political action committee -- Association of Republican Seniors, Wives, Young Professionals and Entrepreneurs (ARSWYPE) -- and Janus Heuchler, director of San Narciso’s Poeslaw Institute for Social Research and Development (PISRAD), joined forces this morning to posit the theory that President Obama’s controversial decision to send forces into Libya may just be a symptom of his irritable personality since quitting cigarettes.
“There are four predominant side effects associated with nicotine withdrawal,” Heuchler stated. “It seems evident to me that President Obama’s poor judgment is the result of his readjustment to a healthier, more moral lifestyle. However, as they say, it’s always darkest before the dawn. Right now, Obama is deep within the darkness of his own corrupted soul, the result of years of substance abuse.”
Olden-Whitely explained the first phase of Obama’s decline.
“Based on Mr. Heuchler’s research into the effects of withdrawal and the ensuing mood shifts, we believe we can track the progress of Obama’s bizarre decision to invade a sovereign nation without provocation or Congressional approval. The first phase is sadness and depression. Consumption of tobacco, a drug basically, helps blot out one’s worries by creating a temporary high. After quitting cigarettes, it’s likely that President Obama awoke to the realization that the world is a terrible, terrible place -- full of violence and suffering and corruption and despair. Following the events in Egypt and Yemen, Libya must have been the last straw in the President’s total loss of faith in humanity.”
“The second step,” Heuchler said, “is anxiety -- the nerves and fears associated with reality bearing down on you. Without turning to his longtime crutch, the cigarette, and being bombarded by just how awful the world really is through the 24-hour news cycle, I can’t imagine that Obama’s sense of purpose remained the same. At some point, he faced the dire revelation that he had signed on to the worst job a black man can have -- the janitor of an uncleanable mess.”
“This leads to boredom and loneliness,” Olden-Whitely continued. “A smoker spends a lot of time puffing, rolling, buying, and preparing things for his habit. The President’s smoking friends are no longer an engaged part of his life. He has no escape from the insurmountable problems of geopolitics. There is nothing to distract him or fill the empty spaces of his soul except for the grim projections of nuclear crises, natural disasters, ballooning deficits, economic collapse, mass unemployment, diaspora, and the Middle Eastern threat of new democracies sprouting up on their own and stealing the thunder of the United States, which is moving away from these outdated political systems.”
Heuchler then concluded that each of these progressions contributed to the final phase of anger, the catalyst to Obama’s attack on Libya.
“Despite making a positive change in his life, President Obama is still subject to the stress that change places on a person’s body. In the short term, a hair-trigger temper and overreacting to trivial events become common distinctions. The uprisings in Libya were merely coincidental. If it wasn’t Gaddafi, it would have been somebody else, in my opinion.”
“But the problem,” Olden-Whitely offered, “is dealing with the ruin Obama will create until he levels out. We’re the ones who will ultimately suffer the torments inflicted by his personal demons. As I see it, we’re trapped in a plane on a collision course with Mount Rushmore; and there’s a paranoid, detoxing junkie at the controls. All irony aside, fasten your safety belts, ladies and gentlemen...and smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.”