Can you be any [u] more [/i] loaded OP?
Executive order has always been a right of the head of the executive branch so there is no need to even state Obama doesn't need congress' permission to start an attack. Take to consideration I said attack, which is what he is limited to. The Executive branch may not in any scenario declare war on an enemy or sovereign state and can only send a contingent force for a limited period. In addition to this, during any time the legislative branch can restrict executive order or pass a mandate forcing a scale down in military forces and the judicial branch can check the actual executive order as either unconstitutional or a rough exploitation of executive right and require an immediate belay of the order itself. As such there is no need for an impeachment which is saved for only the most serious offenses committed during presidency. So what if Obama's opposition says its treason? Unless Obama is accused by the federal government of treason, slander like this has no meaning.In addition, give me a direct cite from the UN ordering President Obama to take ANY offensive action, let alone a war. From what I can take from your opening post you cite a year old blog entry on the libyan engagement which we effectively had nothing more than a support role. Now, you also mention that we don't need to go to war with a country that doesn't endanger national security, Iran, as it does not even plan to make nuclear weapons. That is entirely correct, well, if Iran truly didn't endanger national security.
How Iran endangers national security analysis
- Weakens overall US heg in middle east, links back to how you mentioned we were already in a withdraw of the overall area of the middle east.
- Endangers an ally, escalation and increasing flashpoint scenarios will eventually lead to US intervention anyways, first strike directives should be made to allevate potential damage
Now for cited evidence.
US strength deters Iran and prevents conflict in the Gulf – reassures allies
McGreal, 2010, Guardian's Washington correspondent and former BBC journalist in Central America and merchant seaman.
[Chris McGreal, “US raises stakes on Iran by sending in ships and missiles” Guardian, January 31, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/31/iran-nuclear
-us-missiles-gulf]
Tension between the US and Iran heightened dramatically today with the disclosure that Barack Obama is deploying a missile shield to protect American allies in the Gulf from attack by Tehran. The US is dispatching Patriot defensive missiles to four countries – Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait – and keeping two ships in the Gulf capable of shooting down Iranian missiles. Washington is also helping Saudi Arabia develop a force to protect its oil installations. American officials said the move is aimed at deterring an attack by Iran and reassuring Gulf states fearful that Tehran might react to sanctions by striking at US allies in the region. Washington is also seeking to discourage Israel from a strike against Iran by demonstrating that the US is prepared to contain any threat.
Iranian hegemony threatens to destroy the entire Middle East and Afghanistan
Krauthammer, 07 (Charles, National Review Online, 9/21. “Before the Volcano Explodes”,
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YmRkZWM3ZDEzNjIzNjY1ZmM2M2NkY2E3YjNmMTBiNGY=)
Tensions are already extremely high because of Iran’s headlong rush to go nuclear. In fending off sanctions and possible military action, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has chosen a radically aggressive campaign to assemble, deploy, flaunt, and partially activate Iran’s proxies in the Arab Middle East: †¨†¨(1) Hamas launching rockets into Israeli towns and villages across the border from the Gaza Strip. Its intention is to invite an Israeli reaction, preferably a bloody and telegenic ground assault. †¨†¨(2) Hezbollah heavily rearmed with Iranian rockets transshipped through Syria and preparing for the next round of fighting with Israel. The Third Lebanon War, now inevitable, awaits only Tehran’s order.†¨†¨(3) Syria, Iran’s only Arab client state, building up forces across the Golan Heights frontier with Israel. And on Wednesday, yet another anti-Syrian member of Lebanon’s parliament is killed in a massive car bombing.†¨†¨(4) The al-Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards training and equipping Shiite extremist militias in the use of the deadliest IEDs and rocketry against American and Iraqi troops. Iran is similarly helping the Taliban to attack NATO forces in Afghanistan.†¨†¨Why is Iran doing this? Because it has its eye on a single prize: the bomb. It needs a bit more time, knowing that once it goes nuclear, it becomes the regional superpower and Persian Gulf hegemon. †¨†¨Iran’s assets in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq are poised and ready. Ahmadinejad’s message is this: If anyone dares attack our nuclear facilities, we will fully activate our proxies, unleashing unrestrained destruction on Israel, moderate Arabs, Iraq, and U.S. interests — in addition to the usual, such as mining the Strait of Hormuz and causing an acute oil crisis and worldwide recession.†¨†¨This is an extremely high-stakes game. The time window is narrow. In probably less than two years, Ahmadinejad will have the bomb.†¨†¨The world is not quite ready to acquiesce. The new president of France has declared a nuclear Iran “unacceptable.” The French foreign minister warned that “it is necessary to prepare for the worst” — and “the worst, it’s war, sir.”†¨†¨Which makes it all the more urgent that powerful sanctions be slapped on the Iranian regime. Sanctions will not stop Ahmadinejad. But there are others in the Iranian elite who might stop both him and the nuclear program before the volcano explodes. These rival elites may be radical but they are not suicidal. And they believe, with reason, that whatever damage Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic folly may inflict upon the region and the world, on Crusader and Jew, on infidel and believer, the one certain result of such an eruption is Iran’s Islamic republic buried under the ash.
Iran is the root of all Middle East instability
Zuckerman, 07 (Mortimer, “Bad Options on Iran”, U.S. News & World Report, 4/23, infotrac)
Look behind the curtain of virtually every major problem in the Middle East, and you will find Iran: killings in Iraq; arms and money for Hezbollah's assaults on Israel and Hezbollah's attempts to usurp the elected government of Lebanon; support of Syria as the hotelier of the region's major terrorist groups; support and training of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and sleeper networks in countries beyond; promotion of a messianic revolutionary ideology that has deepened the Sunni-Shiite divide; the reckless seizure of 15 British sailors and marines as hostages; and defiance of the U.N. in pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Only the United States has the will and the capacity to constrain Iran. Most members of the EU and the U.N. like to believe that Iran's nuclear ambitions, and its meddling in terror, are manageable challenges that can be addressed without military force or serious economic pressure. President Bush thinks otherwise. He is right. To limit the options for countermeasures is to increase the threat. The Iranians cannot be allowed to believe military force is ruled out. Admittedly, however, we are severely constrained by our commitments to Iraq; by the war-weariness of Congress; and not least by the way Iran has dispersed and buried its nuclear facilities. How do you contain a state that nurtures terror in the shadows? And how can Iraq be restored to its traditional balancing role when the leading Shiite parties in Baghdad look to co-religionists in Iran?
Iranian aggression is the greatest threat to world peace
New Agencies, 09 [News Agencies, 6/24/09, “Israel: Iran’s Aggression Makes it Greatest Threat to World Peace” Haaretz pg. http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel-iran-s-aggression-makes-it-greatest-threat-to-world-peace-1.278636]
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday praised Iranians protesting against the election results and said Tehran's "aggressive and violent" behavior made it the greatest threat to world peace. "I think we have to recognize that the greatest threat is the kind of aggressive and violent behavior that we see coming from Iran," Netanyahu told a news conference in Rome. "Iran is not only supporting its terrorist proxies that oppose peace - Hezbollah and Hamas - it is also repressing its own people," he said. "I believe that the courage shown by the people of Iran in facing bullets in the streets for the sake of freedom is something that deserves the salute of free men and women everywhere," said the prime minister.
Reducing military forces emboldens Iran and guarantees they get nuclear weapons
Canada Free Press 7/19 (Alan Caruba, 7/19/10, " US Looks Weak as Iran Flips Off the World ", http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/25552)
For months now, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the owner and editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, has been writing increasingly desperate pleas for the Obama administration to do something about the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East and the world, Iran. “When Barack Obama became president, Iran had perhaps several thousand centrifuges enriching uranium. Now it may have thousands more,” wrote Zuckerman in the August edition. “What's at stake here is too menacing for the world to delude itself that Iran will somehow change course. It won't.” It must be very frustrating to be a multi-millionaire media mogul and yet unable to do much about an impending disaster other than warn about it. My sense is that it falls on deaf ears at the White House. Americans got a glimpse of the President's indifference to the U.S. military when, early in his first year he proposed that veterans carry private health insurance to cover the estimated $540 million annual cost the federal government pays for the treatment of injuries to military personnel received during their tours on active duty. “Look, it's an all volunteer force,” said Obama. “Nobody made these guys to war. They had to have known and accepted the risks. Now they whine about bearing the costs of their choice? It doesn't compute,” adding, “I guess I underestimated the selfishness of some of my fellow Americans.” He backed off that proposal and, of course, later sent 30,000 more troops to the front lines in Afghanistan, the war he deemed the most important. Most observers deem it an unwinnable war. How does one train an Afghan army when an estimated 85% of its soldiers can neither read, nor write? Anyone as dense as Obama should not be allowed to be Commander-in-Chief, but he is and, worse for America and all other nations, he likely has no idea of the dangers involved in reducing the nation's military capabilities at a time when Iran is closing in on becoming a nuclear threat to the Middle East and beyond. “So, if Iran succeeds,” warns Zuckerman, “it would be seen as a major defeat and open our government to doubts about its power and resolve to shape events in the Middle East. Friends would respond by distancing themselves from Washington; foes would aggressively challenge U.S. policies.” Writing in The Wall Street Journal, David Kay, the man who led the U.N. inspections after the Persian Gulf War and later led the CIA's Iraq Survey Group following the 2003 invasion, dismantled the Obama administration claims that either economic sanctions or a weapons inspection program in Iran will deter the Iranians. “As a former weapons inspector, I have very bad news: A weapons inspection regime in Iran will not work.” Don't look to the United Nations to do anything. “Even after Iran's 20-year-long clandestine program started to be revealed the IAEA inspectors have had a hard time getting United Nations authority to confront the Islamic Republic.”
The US can deter Iran
Rubin, 2008, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
[Michael Rubin, “Can a Nuclear Iran Be Contained or Deterred?” American Enterprise Institute, November 2008, http://www.aei.org/outlook/28896]
The International Atomic Energy Agency has said that if the Iranian nuclear program continues apace, the Islamic Republic can become a nuclear weapons-capable state.[4] While Bush remains enigmatic on how far he will go to prevent Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons if diplomacy and economic sanctions fail, top administration officials hint that the Pentagon is not prepared to use military force, even as a last resort.[5] Though strategic bombing of Iranian nuclear targets is off the table in the waning weeks of the Bush presidency, top U.S. military officials like General John Abizaid, former commander of Central Command, and Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argue that the United States can contain or deter a nuclear Iran. On July 21, 2008, for example, Abizaid explained, "I don't believe Iran is a suicide state. . . . Deterrence will work with Iran."[6] Whether deterrence and containment against a nuclear Iran deserve the faith Abizaid and Mullen hold in them, the options are unclear.
Use of executive order is key to maintaining presidential powers
Mayer 01
Kenneth R., Professor of political science at University of Wisconsin-Madison, With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power, Princeton University Press, p.28-29, 2001
This theoretical perspective offered by the new institutional economics literature provides a way of making sense of the wide range of executive orders issued over the years, and is the centerpiece of my approach. The common theme I find in significant executive orders is control: executive orders are an instrument of executive power that presidents have used to control policy, establish and maintain institutions, shape agendas, manage constituent relationships, and keep control of their political fate generally. 128 Within the boundaries set by statute or the Constitution, presidents have consistently used their executive power—often manifested in executive orders—to shape the institutional and political context in which they sit. There are, to be sure, limits on what presidents can do relying solely on executive orders and executive power, and presidents who push too far will find that Congress and the courts will push back. Yet the president retains significant legal, institutional, and political advantages that make executive authority a more powerful tool than scholars have thus far recognized. This emphasis on control allows for a longer-term view than that generally taken by informal approaches to presidential leadership. I conclude that presidents have used executive orders to alter the institutional and political contexts in which they operate. The effects of any one effort in this regard may not be immediately apparent, and in many cases presidents succeed only after following up on what their predecessors have done. In this respect I view presidential leadership as both strategic and dynamic, a perspective that brings into sharper relief the utility of executive power to the presidency. I also differ with Neustadt on this score, as he looks at how presidents can be tactically effective within a particular structure context over which they have no control.
Now to do some calc on the wall of text I just posted
Claim: Iran Bad. Need US action(executive order)
Warrant: Iran causes nuclear prolif, lost of heg(Internal link: We withdraw) , insecurity, endangers allies, and causes eventual escalation
Impact: Nuclear war. No XO is equivalent to lost of presidential powers and presidential thick power, results in collapse of US checks and balances. Reduction in US leadership reduces internation heg. more nuclear war. Etc. Etc. Did I mention nuclear war?