Lib-WTF?!
I don't know much, but I know this guy looks fucking crazy.
Back in mid-March, I wrote a tome about the situation in Libya. In it, I said the following:
The problem with the current debate regarding Obama’s actions in Libya is that people on the left are talking past each other. Lefties are conflating two debates: (1) a debate regarding whether or not it is proper for the United States to be mandated by treaties (which are the supreme law of the land and not subject to Congressional encroachment) to get involved in such critical humanitarian peacekeeping missions absent a polling of public opinion and absent authorization from Congress, and (2) a debate about the legality of what Obama is doing. The first debate is not a debate about Obama’s current actions in Libya; it’s a policy debate. It’s a debate about international law, and the United States’ place as a member of the international community and whether or not the UN is totally useless. As to the second debate, it seems to me that Obama is following the rules, at least as far as I can tell. If you want to complain about the rules, that’s cool. But that’s debate number 1. As to debate number 2, get off Obama’s back already. MIRITE?
Whelp, here we are three months later, still not talking about the United Nations Charter and still not talking about the role the United Nations should play in American foreign policy decisionmaking.
We are still arguing about whether or not Libya is JUST LIKE IRAQ!!!11one. (It’s not. Not even a little – the 2003 land-invasion of Iraq was not sanctioned by the Security Council.)
We are still listening to the musings — This War Is Illegal! – proffered by all sorts of constitutional law experts like Michael Moore, Dennis Kucinich, and Eugene Robinson.
And finally Glenn Greenwald, of course, is still claiming that This War Is Illegal!, having not at all addressed any of the issues regarding the interplay between Articles 42 and 43 which I raised in my post in March in response to his out-of-hand dismissal of those arguments.1 (Indeed, as could have been expected, Greenwald made and then half-assedly backed away from an argument that the US along with Britain and France launched this war for oil.)
So, I figured I’d wade in (again) only to be ignored (again, I’m sure).
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In August 1996, 250 people watched as Kenya’s highest Catholic cleric, Cardinal Maurice Otunga, ceremonially set fire to boxes full of condoms and copies of “safe sex” pamphlets. In the face of the rapidly-mounting African AIDS crisis, the Vatican had responded by saying basically that while HIV and AIDS might be bad, the use of contraceptives was worse — and it will always be impossible to know how many were condemned to die miserable, wasting deaths as a result.
