Your sons and daughters are fighting for France in Libya

Yesterday, looking back, Clinton explained the discrepancy this way: “I don’t think that this kind of internationally authorized intervention, where we are one of a number of countries participating to enforce a humanitarian mission, is the kind of unilateral action that either I or President Obama was speaking of several years ago.”

In other words, when the mission is “internationally authorized,” the president doesn’t have to consult Congress.

I’m no Tea Partier, but that sure sounds like a substitution of foreign for congressional authority. It’s worse than outsourcing. Outsourcing is when you hire somebody abroad to do what you want. In Libya, we’re doing the opposite. We’re hiring ourselves out to do what somebody abroad wants. We’re providing what Gates calls our “unique capabilities”—scores of Tomahawk missiles, tanking equipment, surveillance and reconnaissance systems—to an international coalition whose authority somehow replaces consultation with our elected representatives.