To the Editor:
Re “White House Defends Continuing U.S. Role in Libya Operation” (news article, June 16):
When does the use of the armed forces of the United States trigger the War Powers Act of 1973? Do our operations in Libya constitute “hostilities” within the meaning of that resolution? Learned counsel for the State Department and the White House are giving answers to such questions that would make medieval scholastics and others who prize logic and semantics blush with embarrassment.
There are no caveats in the War Powers Act. The words are perfectly clear—certainly clear enough for a former lecturer in constitutional law (President Obama) or a former dean of the Yale Law School (Harold H. Koh, a State Department legal adviser) to comprehend and apply in the manner that Congress intended.
GEORGE DARGO
Boston, June 16, 2011
The writer is a professor of law at New England Law/Boston.
To the Editor:
President Obama may avoid having to ask Congress for authorization under the War Powers Act by defining our violent efforts to topple Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi as other than hostilities. But such doublespeak will be widely recognized for the hypocrisy it is.
There is not a nation in the world, including the United States, that would not consider the scale of death and destruction that we and the allies have wrought upon Libya as hostilities were such harm wrought upon it.
JOHN TALBUTT
Elmsford, N.Y., June 19, 2011
Note from KBJ: I await calls by progressives for the prosecution and disbarment of Harold Koh. How is his behavior different from that of John Yoo?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 