Yes, I know who wrote that article, and if you notice, he states the resolution is more limited than the President’s constitutional authority to do whatever the heck he wants, but he’s still a decent legal mind, and I do believe he is correct in this matter, even if he’s a criminal who should be thrown in jail.
I couldn’t find anything more on-topic that was a direct administration position paper.
The United Nations Participation Act gives full legal cover.
That act was passed in 1945. The WPR was passed in 1973.
And you’ll note that even the 1945 act addresses issues of “international peace and security”, not issues of an internal civil war.
Personally, I think even the UN is out of bounds interfering with the internal actions of a sovereign state.
And how long might that take, John? Might we arrive just in time to take part in the burial detail?
You present your case as though it were cut and dried. You are offered expert opinion on the matter that contradicts your position, and appear unfazed. (If not, you might at least say so, like, “I’m totally fazed over here.”) Amongst the senior Congressgits mentioned above, how many, do you think, are Obama’s political enemies? Are they not likely to jump on a clear and obvious breach of Constitutional authority? So, why didn’t they?
Because it isn’t clear and obvious, or, at the very least, not so starkly apparent as you insist? Umbras, penumbras and emanations, oh, my!
I have political and Constitutional principles, oodles and gobs of them. And if one of them would forbid me from acting to save uncounted thousands of innocent lives, I’ll chuck it overboard in a heartbeat. Perhaps later, I’ll quietly pick it up, clean it and polish it and put it back in place. But I see nothing to admire in putting political or Constitutional principle above humanity. And if that’s hypocrisy, I’ll get over it.
Congress can act quickly when the use of military force is involved. They have done so in the past. Or, perhaps if Obama had not dithered until it was almost too late, he could have had more time to work with Congress.
Principles that are called upon only when it is expedient to do so are not principles.
I attempted to answer the WPR vs. UNPA issue in the GD thread, and attempted the “international peace and security” question in this thread. You gave rebuttals, but they boiled down to: a) Qaddafi’s actions don’t fall under “crimes against humanity”, and b) the UNSC resolution which established the responsibility to protect principle wasn’t ratified into the charter by general vote so it is not binding. I would still disagree with both of those points.
This is exactly what elucidator just said, except he’s talking about the primacy of moral principles over ethical/legal ones.
OK, then they’re “guidelines”. I don’t have any principles that paralyze my humanity, nor will I. Fuck that shit!
The button is before you, press the button, save countless lives, but commit the dreadful sin of hypocrisy. You’ll press it, John, I have every confidence. If you can’t, stand aside and I will, I can live with the crushing burden of hypocrisy, and you can keep your pristine principles. Mazel tov, much good may they do you.
ETA: Friggin’ Xeno! Presents my position better than I do myself! Asshole. Smarty pants.
John has replied to people following my post, but not my post. Interesting. It’s the one with the reasoned legal letter in it. The one that says the President is the Commander in Chief. And specifically notes his ability to attack Tripoli if he so feels like it.
No. The moral course is to stick to your legal options until there is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are compelled, morally, to act. You keep putting up this false dichotomy. Obama didn’t even try. He now claims that, legally, he doesn’t have to. That’s not the actions of someone overriding a legal concern with a moral one. You see things that simply aren’t there. You create some hypothetical excuse when the plain facts are that he didn’t even try.
I honestly thought that was a joke. What “threats to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” are involved here?
At least Jefferson was responding to attacks on US vessels.
If anything, we are likely creating the conditions that your cite warns about. We had our duel with Kadhaffi about his support of terrorism and we reconciled. This is just making the world free to fight civil wars village-to-village and house-to-house. How lovely.
To quote a wiser person, balderdash sir! Tommyrot!
You keep trying to turn this into a clear violation of legalities, when that is far from clear, and you keep dismissing the moral cause for action as if it isn’t arguable, which it manifestly is.
You’ve made a good case for your position, I’m not arguing that you haven’t or that my reasons, or Shayna’s or elucidator’s are somehow better reasons than yours. Please don’t pretend the issue is beyond reasonable disagreement, and please stop throwing up the patently ridiculous claim that Obama didn’t “try” to do a number of things prior to the UNSC action. Thanks.
Oh, I see. So Ghadaffy threatening to wade in the blood of his political enemies, he was maybe just kidding around? Us nervous nellies overreacted to those armored columns heading toward Bengazzi, they were going camping?
Now, “Obama didn’t even try”? That, boiled down, says he didn’t comply with what you insist are his obligations. There is knowledgeable opinion that suggests that he did what he was obliged to do, yet you insist otherwise. Permit me to believe that your expertise in this regard might not be definitive? His resume includes lecturer in Constitutional law at a well-regarded law school. And yours?
Indeed. I imagine that Elucidator regards it as poor taste, much as with his weary dismissals of any tedious retreading of some vulgar little inconvenient truth of the past dredged by tired hacks who haven’t the decency to move on…
Well, that didn’t take long.
*Now that President Barack Obama has intervened in Libya, his army of apologists is mobilizing to defend his “humanitarianism,” declaring that his war isn’t at all like Bush’s wars. It’s something new, and different – and admirable.
I’m not at all surprised. Are you? The anti-interventionist veneer of most American liberals and assorted “progressives” peels off quite readily when a little “humanitarian” lotion is applied – especially if it’s poured on thick by a liberal Democratic President with a domestic agenda they can endorse. *
…
We’re not cowboys: we’re social workers, the kind with mean, pinched faces and a moralizing, condescending air – armed with fighter jets, guided missiles, and nuclear weapons, and determined to Do Good.
Now that the United States has bankrupted itself by spending more on “defense” than the rest of the world combined, the “multilateralists” take up the task of convincing the American people they’ve got to pursue the dream of empire to the very end. Oh no, they say, we’re good “liberals,” we don’t dream of empire – only of “international law” and a “global order.” Top dog? Not us! We’ll leave that onerous job to the UN Security Council.
Yes, and you’ll note the Obama-ites went to the Council, not the Congress, to ask permission to strike: and just to show we’re not the Top Dog, they let the Brits and the Frenchies take the lead. What generosity.
*The “argument” presented here is the one progressives have salved their perpetually guilty consciences with ever since this manifestly unqualified ex-“community organizer” took up residence in the White House: he’s not Bush! That’s why they remained silent when he extended our perpetual “war on terrorism” into Pakistan, why they kept mum as the PATRIOT Act was reauthorized at the behest of the administration, and why they put the covers over their heads and stuck their fingers in their ears as George Bush’s torture regime continued, unabated and even expanded, under Obama. It’s why they ignored our failure to withdraw from Iraq, as promised by candidate Obama, and why they smiled politely and changed the subject whenever anyone had the poor taste to mention these unpleasant subjects. *
Justin Raimondo – Liberals March to War : Antiwar 23 March 2011
Wow. Justin Raimondo’s a moron.
Got any other sad bullshit you’d like to inflict on us?
Gosh, the justification for military involvement matters. News at freaking 11.
I’m wondering, is this an effort from the right to co-opt “anti-war”?
That’s right. Obama’s not a real multilateralist. He just works with other countries to pretend he is.
Prolly not: since you have never heard of him, Mr. Raimondo is a paleo-libertarian non-christian who’s been running Antiwar.com since 1995 which opposes all wars and was been particularly prominent against the Bush regime.
Obviously you will recognise these guests as decidedly right-wing, but it is scarcely a fly-by-night opportunist anti-Obama outfit, only objecting to his wars *:
The site syndicates columns and op-eds by such authors as
Ron Paul
Alexander Cockburn
Charley Reese
Cindy Sheehan
John Pilger
Jonathan Cook
Joshua Frank
Juan Cole
Kathy Kelly
Gareth Porter
Kevin Carson
Noam Chomsky
Norman Solomon
Pat Buchanan
Paul Craig Roberts
Robert Fisk
William Lind
Tom Engelhardt
- Three, and counting.
The thing is, if he opposes all wars, why not just say that? Why make a charade of arguing the fine points of the justifications for this one and that one, when none of that really matters to him–no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the arguments, Raimondo is always going to oppose, right?