Oh god yes.Colin Powell
Oh god yes.Colin Powell
And no, the President shouldn't be able to kill poor Africans without the legislator allowing it. The reason the Constitution says he must ask the legislator is so he doesn't go out and kill poor Africans.
Actually it was to stop another Vietnam.
Didn't really work though because Bush did ask congress to go to war in Afghanistan.
The Constitution predates the Vietnam war a bit, but yes that is why it is there. It isn't perfect, but it does help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution
Its from 1973, before then the President could do what he liked with the armed forces. The only part of the constitution which is relevant to this is the War Powers Clause which requires congress to declare War, but a War declaration is not required before deploying the armed forces.
Why do American elections drone on for such a long time before the actual election takes place?
This is absolutely not the same thing. We're not trying to stuff democracy down some country's throat.Going into Libya is bad for the same reason going into Iran, Indonesia, Chile, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. were bad reasons. Believing these people are too stupid to run their own countries is a disastrous ethnocentric world view. Not everyone is ready for democracy, rebels can be just as bad or worse than the dictatorships they fight against, there are never purely good and bad guys (sorry we don't live in a comic book or the Bible).
As a member of NATO, as a matter of fact, we absolutely do have business helping those rebels.The U.S. has no business helping these rebels. There is no proof that these rebels won't be worse than the current government. The U.S. has a long history of helping the underdog only to see it become worse than the regime it replaced.
It is hard to say that a rebellion government that has existed only for a few months is a strong one. The fact that it has popped up so quickly makes it looks suspiciously like a C.I.A. operation (which if it is it is doomed to horrible failure). C.I.A. replaces non friendly regime with new one, new regime ends up being far more horrible, new regime is over thrown decades later. See the references I made above for examples of the C.I.A.'s work.
Last time I voted third party. If more people would do that instead of "picking the lesser of two evils" we'd be better off.
Am I the only Christian left here who's deeply offended by the willingness of politicians to use the name of God for personal and political gain? Surely not, but if that's the case, the rest of us sane folk need to step forward and make ourselves heard.
I do not care how religious (or not) my politicians are because it simply does not matter. The USA is not, should not be, and should never be a theocracy. I don't care if you worship pants in your spare time as long as you're competent at what you've been elected to do. Your private life--and that should include your religion--is none of my business.
It's always fascinated me that while the US has no national religion, you can't get elected without being outwardly religious. Prefrably protestant.
I really wish Obama got a set of balls for his birthday, the way he constantly caves is really pissing me off.
Bachman is a homophobe, is WAAYYYY too social conservative for my taste and I think she is flat out crazy. I also despise the Tea Baggars so I won't vote for any of their favorites, I have no desire to associate with racist, fat baby boomers.
Pawlenty is boring and really stands no chance.
Herman Cain stands no chance and I don't think he likes to read (the whole small bill thing, idiotic), plus Godfathers Pizza is terrible.
John Huntsman has been doing horrible in the debates so far.
Santorum... About the only thing I like about him is that he pissed off the gay community enough that they came up with an awesome definition for his name. He stands no chance, oh and in Iowa he is giving out home made jelly at his tent, combine that with above definition, awesome.
Romney, I MAYBE can see voting for him but I really don't like what he did at Bain Capital, I feel that is the type of business experience our executive branch can do without.
Rick Perry, no, no, NO! I will not vote for someone who said Texas should leave the union. I also will not vote for that type of holier-than-thou-I'm-better-than-you-Christian. Also last time we had a Texas governor we wound up in two unpaid for wars and the rich pay virtually no taxes.
As a member of NATO, as a matter of fact, we absolutely do have business helping those rebels.
And I won't discount your latter point, because it's certainly true... but again, this is a totally different scenario than the ones you cited in your previous post. We're not trying to create a new regime. We aren't there to start an uprising. We're there to prevent the mass slaughter of a sizable revolt against a despot.