GLITZ and ballyhoo surrounded US President Barack Obama’s recent UK visit.

It was ostensibly a friendly visit, but in reality was designed to ensure the British (and EU) establishment conform to the USA’s design for the Arab world.

The tone of recent speeches in the US House of Representatives and a major CNN Republican presidential debate, however, indicate renewed anti-war sentiment.

As White House duplicity has a long pedigree, armed intervention in Libya, without congressional authorisation, shouldn’t surprise students of American politics.

This is the way it has been since Franklin D Roosevelt’s time. And this is what has happened since:

  • President Truman called America’s ‘undeclared’ Korean War “police action”.
  • The Tonkin Gulf Resolution authorising LBJ in Vietnam is now regarded by historians as dubious.
  • Bill Clinton launched his war in Serbia in defiance of a House vote against it.
  • George W Bush slipped into Afghanistan 10 years ago, with a subsequent cost of 6,000 US troops dead, 40,000 wounded, $1 trillion sunk, and the Taliban now fighting on the Pakistan border at battalion strength.
  • He did the same in Iraq eight years ago, this time with Congressional support but based on lies regarding alleged weapons of mass destruction.
  • Now it’s Obama’s Libyan war, without support, though egged on by France and Britain.

Is it a small matter for US presidents to mislead Congress, or authorise war without consulting it fully? Doesn’t that breach the US constitution? What is the price of being in Nato these days?

STEPHEN WARD, Tudor Close, Oxford