Charles Richardson and the Editorial board, “conflicted” as they were, used the Declaration of Independence to justify war against the sovereign nation of Libya.

What can I say? It is like using the Constitution’s welfare clause to justify socialism or the interstate commerce clause to justify and empower an omnipotent, omniscient, all-powerful government, instead of a limited, constitutional one.

But why not pick on Syria or North Korea? (And God forbid that we have the temerity to mention Cuba.) All of these regimes have abused and are abusing their own people. Syrian security forces are shooting down their own protesting citizens as I write these words.

And why Libya now, when Col. Moammar Gadhafi, while no less bizarre is certainly less atrocious than he was in his enfant terrible days of the 1970s through the 1990s?

It is obvious President Obama attacked Libya for political reasons: to increase his standing in the polls and to eliminate Col. Gadhafi (the U.N. mandate notwithstanding), who had given George W. Bush presidential prestige by the colonel’s renunciation of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (even allowing inspection of his country for U.N. confirmation).

Frankly, after this incident in placing war and politics above constitutional prerogatives, Obama should relinquish his prematurely awarded Nobel Peace Prize. It is now clear he never deserved it in the first place.

Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D. is a resident of Macon, GA

This letter to the editor was published in The Macon Telegraph on April 8, 2011. Copyright ©2011 Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D.