Smack of the day and the Friday evening dump

First, da schmack:

When historians sit down decades from now to address the events of the early 21st century, they will have no trouble explaining why Americans elected Barack Obama president. They elected him out of a firm conviction that the United States was not involved in enough wars.

Steve Chapman at Reason.com expands upon 1) Libya, 2) Yemen, 3) Iraq and 4) Afghanistan at the link above but neglects this administration's war on jobs. A glaring omission as far as we're concerned.


Libya, you say? In a bit of a news dump this past Friday, and who could be blamed for not catching it with the Big Media-Governor Palin dumpster-diving extravaganza kicking-off, we via NATO are finally stating what our kinetic military actions have declared all along: we are pursuing regime-change there.

A U.N. resolution justifies the targeting of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, a senior NATO military official with operational knowledge of the Libya mission told CNN Thursday.

Asked by CNN whether Gadhafi was being targeted, the NATO official declined to give a direct answer. The resolution applies to Gadhafi because, as head of the military, he is part of the control and command structure and therefore a legitimate target, the official said.

But to be completely fair to the Commander-in-Chief, we have far less of a problem with what's going on in Yemen where just last week, we took out a top al Qaeda commander, Abu Ali al-Harithi, in an American air strike, than we do in Libya where we have not been granted any congressional approval to take out a sitting head of state.

In Yemen, the President has cover as granted by the Authorization for Use of Military Force of September 18, 2001.

(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Yemen, yes. Libya, no.

Hey, you may disagree with the AUMF and/or its application with respect to our actions in Yemen but, as opposed to what we are pursuing in Libya, there is, at least, a thread of legal logic to it.

And, again, with respect to the engagement level of the President: he never seems as focused or locked-in on the job as he does when he's wacking people.