Did Obama prove that ISIS represented an immanent threat to the United States, as the United Nations Charter—to which we are legally bound by American law as signatories—demands as first criteria for aggressive action? Not in the slightest. Did he persuade the Security Council to approve the attacks? Hardly. Did he ask Congress to authorize this war? Please reference the Authorization of Military Force Act (AUMF) for the answer to this question. Did he at least get Syrian permission for violating its sovereignty and bombing its grain silos? Not a chance. However, we are comforted by the mainstream media’s celebration of the fact that the administration “informed” Syria that it was about to violate its airspace. Surely an act of magnanimity not seen since the Marshall Plan. Howard Friel neatly shredded the pathetic neocon argument for the legality of the attacks: “Although Samantha Power, US ambassador to the United Nations, claimed in her words ‘a fundamental principle in the United Nations Charter that gives countries the right to defend themselves, including using force on another country’s territory when that country is unwilling or unable to address it,’ there is no rule in the Charter that would permit one country (in this case Iraq) to invite a second country (the United States) to bomb a third country (Syria) at the discretion of the first and second countries and without Security Council authorization.”
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 12:37:59 +0000