War Number Four

It turns out that Libya is not the third war that the US is engaged in, but the fourth. Number three would be Yemen, since 2009:

The United States is intensifying airstrikes in strife-torn Yemen, where Washington has been conducting a covert war in an attempt to help the government there combat a growing rebel threat.

In particular, The New York Times said, the U.S. has increased drone attacks in recent weeks as well as airstrikes using traditional fighter jets, as growing rebel resistance poses a mounting threat to the Sana government, a U.S. ally.

...

Total U.S. involvement in Yemen has been one of the Obama administration's best-kept secrets, the Times said, after President Ali Abdullah Saleh authorized limited American involvement in 2009.

This won't encourage Yemeni citizens to hate us more at all.

What happened to Obama's claim that he would bring troops home? What about Joe Biden's bold statement that presidents who engage in war without prior approval of Congress should be impeached? Either this was political opportunism, riding on liberal anti-Bush sentiment from the beginning, or these supposed peaceniks were overcome by the desire for power once they assumed executive positions. Neither bodes well.

And what about the anti-war left? Given how much they howled about a war that Congress did sign off on, shouldn't a secret war mean that it's time to dust off the pitchforks again? At the time, it sounded like they elected Obama partially because he campaigned on an anti-war platform. Apparently meeting constitutional requirements is not enough for a Republican president, but for a Democrat, even secret wars are justifed.