经济学人下载:下降星座-战神火星

To make matters worse, he now denies that it is a war at all. Under the War Powers Resolution a president must ask Congress’s permission if hostilities last more than 90 days. That deadline fell on June 17th, but Mr Obama did not ask, on the eccentric ground that America’s “supporting role” no longer amounts to “hostilities”. This has outraged even the war’s supporters, especially since the disclosure that Mr Obama overruled the lawyers in the Justice and Defence Departments and turned to more pliant ones in the White House and State Department. Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale, said in the New York Times that this could open the way for “even more blatant acts of presidential war-making in the decades ahead”.

更糟糕的是，他现在根本就否认这是一场战争。根据《战争权利法》，如果军事行动超过90天，总统必须获得国会批准。90天的期限6月17日就到了，但是奥巴马没有申请国会批准，理由很奇怪——美国只发挥了“辅助作用”，不能算是“军事行动”。这个借口甚至激怒了战争的支持者，特别是消息披露奥巴马否决了司法部和国防部律师的建议，采纳白宫和国务院内更听话的律师的意见。耶鲁大学法律和政治科学系教授布鲁斯·阿克曼在接受《纽约时报》采访时表示，此举将为“未来几十年中总统更肆无忌惮地发动战争”打开大门。

It is odd. A weary America has adopted Mr Obama’s wary instincts in foreign policy. He is making a good fist of extricating America from the big wars he inherited from George Bush. But the tiny one he entered so cautiously himself, in which not a single American soldier has died, has brought him disproportionate grief. Even before it disposed of bin Laden, America had lost its appetite for venturing abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

这真是很奇怪。厌战的美国接收了奥巴马在外交政策上的谨慎直觉。总统正成功地将美国从布什留下的几场大型战争中拉出来，但是他本人小心翼翼参与的小型战争却给他带来不成比例的负担，虽然这次没有一个美国士兵阵亡。甚至在处理掉本·拉登之前，美国就已经没什么胃口去海外冒险寻找怪物加以消灭了。