Do citizens support fighting in Libya?

A recent post on the blog "firedoglake" reports that citizens of both the US and the UK do not support the involvement of their respective countries in Libya. While Obama authorized the attacks without consent of the congress, the post claims that those accusing the President of exceeding his limits "would be vastly outnumbered should the question actually be brought to a vote." The article seeks to persuade its readers that the President has ignored Constitutional requirements, while Congress ignores the wishes of the public to remain peaceful. The author also questions the motives of the involvement of the US, describing the conflict in Libya as one that "does not directly affect US security," instead citing incentives related to lowering oil prices.


After my first glance, I was convinced that the country had in fact over-steppped its jurisdiction, and that the politicians were acting out of complete disregard for the wishes of the American public. However, a second glance at the statistics provided to support the notion that American citizens, "do not want war," revealed glaring breaks in the train of logic of the author.

To begin, the poll was specifically about the allocation of money to the National Defense budget. While this budget can be simply linked to the material required to carry out operations in Libya, it is definitely not a direct poll of the public with clear regard to the situation there. It certainly is possible for a citizen to wish for the government to cut the yearly defense budget gradually while also believing that currently involvement in this particular conflict is for the better. Also, from the authors direct quote of the poll, "51 percent of Americans support reducing the defense spending," which means 49% don't. To me, this is not a convincing majority of the American public, especially seeing as how the data was collected from a poll. The author is making great leaps and bounds in logic and makes completely unsupported accusations when he claims that this is a case in which "even when the citizens do not want war, US elected representatives vote overwhelmingly in its favor." If this is really the case, he should support this with applicable data, not with a poll that was taken about two weeks ago, when the conflict itself was just developing into an issue! In my mind this makes the author unreliable, twisting facts that seem to support him.


Secondly the authors briefly skims over the intent of the country in its involvement, and dismisses these motives as something involving keeping low oil prices. After my first read of the article I looked for other news of the situation in Libya, as I have not kept up with it myself and knew only that there WAS a conflict of some sort. After what I read here, I was appalled that the author of the blog completely ignored any moral implications of American involvement. Describing motives as related to oil is a great disservice to the blogger's readers. The Libyan dictator is in fact moving to crush a rebellion against his oppressive government, and without outside forces' involvement rebel forces would likely have been massacred.

I personally disagree with the author, and instead agree with the involvement overseas. While it may smack of similar conflicts of Afghanistan and Iraq, I would not agree with simply being audience to a massacre of unsatisfied rebels and citizens. I do not know if the President has over-stepped his authority as commander-in-chief by authorizing American involvement, but if the author is correct about the disposition of our Congress members then it is only a problem of the technicality.