Except that NATO is not separate from the United States, but dominated by the United States, its largest member. Attributing atrocities to NATO puts them outside Congress' purview. Assigning whole wars to NATO, as was done by former president Clinton in Yugoslavia, should not provide the same cover.
There's nothing legal about this, and there wouldn't be even if NATO were a non-U.S. entity, or even if Congress had declared war on Libya. As Marjorie Cohn points out:
"The UN Charter does not permit the use of military force for humanitarian interventions . . . . It is only when peaceful means have been tried and proved inadequate that the Security Council can authorize action under Chapter VII of the Charter.
Cohn also looks at what the Libya resolution says:
"Security Council Resolution 1973 begins with the call for 'the immediate establishment of a ceasefire.' . . . The resolution authorizes UN Member States 'to take all necessary measures . . . to protect civilians and civilian populated areas' of Libya. But instead of pursuing an immediate ceasefire, immediate military action was taken . . . . The military force exceeds the bounds of the 'all necessary measures' authorization. 'All necessary measures' should first have been peaceful measures to settle the conflict. Yet peaceful means were not exhausted before the military invasion began. A high level international team -- consisting of representatives from the Arab League, the African Union, and the UN Secretary General -- should have been dispatched to Tripoli to attempt to negotiate a real cease-fire, and set up a mechanism for elections and for protecting civilians. Moreover, after the passage of the resolution, Libya immediately offered to accept international monitors and Qadaffi offered to step down and leave Libya. These offers were immediately rejected by the opposition. . . . Obama, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain's David Cameron penned an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune that said the NATO force will fight in Libya until President Muammar Qaddafi is gone, even though the Resolution does not sanction forcible regime change."
Even if you supported the initial "humanitarian" imposition of the "no fly zone" in Libya -- and the laws be damned -- you need a new reason to support the ongoing bombing of Tripoli and the West's efforts to impose a puppet government on Libya by force. The International Criminal Court's willingness to charge Gadaffi, but not Obama, with crimes is not a reason. Wars are not legally justified by a national leader's criminality. You need a new excuse. And I'm ashamed of the ones the White House is coming up with.
If we are going to properly educate our children to evade substantive compliance with laws and moral standards, we need to show them how to do it right. The Yoo-Bybee model, now perfected by Obama and Hillary Clinton's gang, still does not seem quite worthy of our position as world leader. I think we can do better, and I trust that our greatest legal minds are hard at work on the matter.
If something even more brilliant than "reset the clock" isn't thought of soon, I wouldn't be entirely shocked if a newspaper somewhere in the country thought to ask why Obama doesn't just ask Congress to authorize his war. And I would consider it a real, if remote, possibility that a reader somewhere might actually stop and think about that question.
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