By Jesse Jose

A Cup O' Kapeng Barako

L ibyans against Libyans.  Muslims against Muslims. 

Libya is in flames. It's at war. And Americans are in it. Barack Hussein Obama, a suspected Muslim, put us in it. America is now fighting in multiple wars against three Muslim Nations: Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. And that's truly tragic.  

But amidst all these, I can hear gleeful laughter from another Muslim: Osama bin Laden. 

Don't mean to be insensitive about killings and deaths and all that.  But I think there's something laughable about the war in Libya.  And that's because I can imagine laughter from Osama bin Laden, the world leader of the Al Qaeda, from his cave somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, at Barack Hussein Obama in his temporary rent-free (four-year, no doubt) abode at the White House in Washington, DC.

And this laughter is because of those Libyan rebels, that President Obama and the coalition allies, have chosen to side with in this Libyan Civil War, that according to US and British intelligence reports, "teems with Al Qaeda fighters and supporters." 

Picture it, Dear Readers. Can y'all really blame then Osama for laughing at Obama? 

O bama is barking at the wrong tree, so to speak.   Even State Secretary Hilary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates both admitted that "we don't really know who these 'rebels' are."   

According to reports, those rebels mostly came from the eastern part of Libya, in a town, called Benghazi.  And many of those "rebels" were the same ones that crossed over to Iraq to join the Al Qaeda there in killing U.S. soldiers.  Rebels that the Western press had dubbed as "civilians" that Moammar Gadhafi's had been killing daw. 

Civilians, yes, but armed with war weapons, and willing to die for their cause.  Just like those civilian-attired dangerously-armed Viet Congs during the Vietnam War, civilian farmers during the day, but Viet Congs and fierce fighters at night.

WHY ACTION WAS JUSTIFIED:  In his speech Monday night to the American public thoroughly confused about U.S. policy in Libya, Obama said that the reason America intervened on Gadhafi's dastardly deeds against his own people was because: "To brush aside America's responsibility as a leader -- and more profoundly -- our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are."

Really? Who are we, really? How come we didn't intervene in the genocides in Armenia, in Cambodia, in Rwanda ... in the bloody ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region of Sudan? Because there were no oil in those places, perhaps? 

But there's oil in Libya. There's oil in Iraq. There's oil in Afghanistan.  Lotsa oil in the Middle East, that's for sure.  America is greedy for oil. I hope that's not who we are, or are we?

FROM NO-FLY ZONE TO BOOTS ON THE GROUND: Obama said that our involvement in Libya would just be on a "limited scope."  We are just going to enforce a "no-fly zone," so Gadhafi won't be able to use planes to kill and bomb his own people.  We are just going to shoot down his planes flying in the air. 

So, some of Gadhafi's planes got shot down and their bases bombed. 

But that wasn't enough.  It turned out that we have escalated the violence by using Tomahawk missiles and relentless bomb runs against Gadhafi's troops and tanks on the ground. 

Now, there are even talks among Obama's people of arming those rebels.  And that means, we will have to send military trainers there to show to those rebels how to use those weapons of war we are going to give them.  That means boots on the ground ... soldiers.

That's how the war in Vietnam began. America at first sent "advisers" for the South Vietnamese Army.  Then when those soldier-advisers started getting shot at and getting killed by the Viet Congs, America began to send more soldiers ... then more soldiers, then warplanes and warships to bomb the enemy and defoliate with Agent Orange the lush jungles of that country that served then as cover for the Viet Congs. 

That war lasted for two decades and killed 58,195 U.S. soldiers, all of them, comrades of mine. Their names are now permanently etched on the ghostly Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.  And only God knows how many Vietnamese people were killed, because nobody knows exactly for sure. 

And, there was not even any oil there.

THE POWER TO DECLARE WAR: As we all know, President Obama was a professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard in the early days of his brilliant career.  And, we all know, too, that Obama, "the commander-in chief" of America's Armed Forces, is NOT EMPOWERED to start a war.  The Constitution said, only "Congress shall have ... power to declare war."

The Constitution also said that no "state shall engage in war, unless ACTUALLY INVADED, or in such "IMMINENT DANGER as will not admit of delay ... WITHOUT the consent of Congress."  

In other words, Congress gets to decide ... NOT President Obama.

B ut did Obama seek the consent of U.S. Congress to bomb Libya?  Heck, no!  He sought merely the consent of his fellow Arabs, oops, I mean, the Arab League ... and they gave it to him.  And to make it appear that he had international consent, Obama also sought the consent of the United Nations Security Council ... and they gave it to him.

But, did he ask the consent of our U.S. senators and representatives? Heck, no!!! He should have gotten first the permission of the American people to start that war against Libya, NOT merely the consent of the United Nations and the Arab League.

I think he's an arrogant man to bypass the consent of the American people.

Even George W. Bush, in 2002, who exuded the arrogance of a Texas cowboy-gunslinger, asked permission from the U.S. Congress to go to war against Saddam Hussein ... and they gave it to him.

Mr. Obama said that what he's waging now in Libya is NOT a war. He said it's an "operation in a supporting role," a "mission, with limited scope" and an "intervention to stop Gadhafi from killing his own people."

When warplanes are used to shoot down the enemy's planes and bomb their military bases and enemy troops and their military hardware, what do you call that?  When missiles are launched from warships – expensive, sophisticated missiles that cost a million-dollar each – at a sovereign country, what do you call that? When you scream and bad-mouth and belittle a leader of a sovereign country, and telling him "you've got to go or else," what do you call that? 

When you set another country aflame, what do you call that?

WTF!  That's war!  A bloody, frigging war!  And we, Americans are in it!  Obama put us in it! JJ