Comic: Syria in Crisis

Obama's Own Words Could Be Used to Justify an Attack on the US

In his long-awaited address to the nation, the president made another call for the US to uphold international norms. The problem with this line of reasoning is that if the US were to strike Syria for the sake of upholding the law, then another country could just as reasonably attack us on the same grounds. There are, after all, laws prohibiting military aggression in the same way that there are laws prohibiting the use of chemical weapons.

If another country did decide to attack us, they would probably find Obama's words perfectly fitting for their own purposes. Just read the president's speech again with the references to chemical weapons replaced by references to military aggression:

What message will we send if a president can attack a foreign nation in plain sight and pay no price? What’s the purpose of the international system that we’ve built if a prohibition on military aggression that has been agreed to by the governments of 98% of the world’s people...is not enforced?

Make no mistake -- this has implications beyond illegal warfare. If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules? To governments who would choose to build nuclear arms? To terrorists who would spread biological weapons? To armies who carry out genocide?

We cannot raise our children in a world where we will not follow through on the things we say, the accords we sign, the values that define us.

...we will insist that an aggressive attack on another country...must be confronted.

Would anyone object if Russia issued that statement in response to our actions? What if they backed it up by sinking our ships? No, they wouldn't have the law on their side, but neither would we. Their intent to uphold the law would appear just as noble as ours, which is to say, not very noble at all. In fact, it would seem downright hypocritical. How can anyone claim that the act of breaking the law actually upholds it?

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Obama: We Must Uphold International Law by Breaking International Law

Attempting to justify his plans for a military strike on Syria, Obama said today that the US, as a leader in the world, has an "obligation" to uphold international norms.

The problem with this argument is that by attacking Syria, the US would actually be breaking international law, which forbids the sort of strike that Obama is contemplating. In essence, Obama wants to break international law in order to uphold it, a senseless proposition. Assuming the US does have a special obligation to the world, the best way to fulfill it would be to play by the rules. That means respecting both the Constitution and international law. A unilateral strike on Syria would violate both.

(For those who think the president has the power under the Constitution to launch an attack, I addressed that issue here and here. Both Thomas Jefferson and Candidate Obama said that the president did not have that power.)

Of course, it may be that Obama thinks our obligation to punish Assad is greater than our obligation to obey the law. But if we adopt that line of reasoning, then Russia, who is currently moving warships into the area, may very well adopt a similar line of reasoning toward us. We would, after all, be breaking the same sort of international agreement that Assad is supposedly breaking, and we would, therefore, be worthy of receiving the same sort of unilateral punishment at the hands of Russia.

Would people complain if Russia attacked us? Of course. But anyone who thinks that Obama is justified in punishing Syria would have to agree that Russia would be equally justified in punishing us. As Obama said today, no one will take international laws seriously if no one enforces them. Just imagine those words coming from a Moscow official next week when Russia is sinking our warships. I wonder if Obama would see the irony.

Of course, all this can be avoided if Obama sits tight and convenes Congress for a vote. It would fail, but it would send an important message to the rest of the world, that world-leaders are bound by their own laws. That sounds much better to me than the reckless course of action currently being considered.

Happy Blog Quotez

Wall Street Journal: 

President Obama said Thursday he hasn't decided whether to attack Syria, adding that any strike would be a brief "shot across the bow" in response to the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons. We can't recall another President suggesting his goal was to miss his military target  

Joe Biden:

...the president has no constitutional authority to take this country to war ... unless we’re attacked or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked. And if he does, I would move to impeach him.

 @TheHutchReport, Twitter:

President Obama is an airstrike away from becoming the first person to win two Nobel Peace Prizes.

Jennifer Rubin Responds to Imaginary Errors with Almost Nothing but Errors

Rand Paul had this to say about Syria:

The United States should condemn the use of chemical weapons. We should ascertain who used the weapons, and we should have an open debate in Congress over whether the situation warrants U.S. involvement. The Constitution grants the power to declare war to Congress, not the President. The war in Syria has no clear national security connection to the United States, and victory by either side will not necessarily bring in to power people friendly to the United States.

All perfectly sensible. Unfortunately, Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post seems to have misunderstood every word, describing Paul's statement as bone-chilling evidence that Paul should "never, ever be commander in chief." Rubin is welcome to her opinion about Paul's fitness for the presidency, but she is flat-out wrong when she says, as she later does, that Paul's statement includes errors. It is her own response, in fact, that is filled with errors. I will address three of them.

We don’t need to ascertain whether chemical weapons have been used (does he read the papers?). We already know.

What Paul said is that we should ascertain who used the chemical weapons, a completely different statement. Modern history is filled with enough false flag attacks to warrant skepticism, and that is what Paul is referring to. But whether or not one thinks a false flag attack is likely to have occurred in this scenario, it is still flat-out wrong for Rubin to imply that Paul's statement is an error.

But the worst is his declaration that we have no national security interest in Syria.

Paul said that the war in Syria has no clear national security connection to the United States, and he is right. After three years, no threat to our national security has emerged as a result of the civil war in Syria. Not a single Syrian bullet or missile has reached our shores. Neither Assad's military nor the rebels fighting it have come to our country and harmed us. Rubin is welcome to argue that the outcome in Syria has consequences for our allies in the region, and therefore has consequences for the United States, but that is not the same as saying that the war in Syria has a clear national security connection to the United States. There is no error in Paul's statement.

As for Congress, Rand Paul again demonstrates his misunderstanding of the Constitution. A declaration of war requires congressional act; a minimal strike of the sort the president contemplates is surely within the Article 1 powers of the commander in chief. Thomas Jefferson thought so.

This is wrong on all counts. First, Article I of the Constitution does not address the "powers of the commander in chief." That would be Article II. More important, however, is Rubin's claim that Thomas Jefferson is on her side. That is simply false. If she wanted to support her hawkish views with history, then she could not have picked a worse example for her purposes. Thomas Jefferson did not think what she claims he did. In fact, he held the opposite view, that the president is prohibited from making even the most minimal attack without congressional approval. If she had bothered to investigate her own example, then she would know this. The instance in question comes from the First Barbary War, when Tripoli declared war on the United States after several years of harassing American ships in the Mediterranean. Congress passed legislation that allowed the president to command six frigates as he "may direct," in order to "protect our commerce & chastise their insolence — by sinking, burning or destroying their ships & Vessels wherever you shall find them."

Even with Congress's approval, however, Jefferson was mindful of his powers under the Constitution. He "sent a small squadron of frigates to the Mediterranean to protect against possible attacks by the Barbary powers," but he insisted that he was "'unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense.' He further noted that it was up to Congress to authorize 'measures of offense also.'"

That bears repeating: Jefferson refused to take offensive measures against Tripoli because, in his own words, he was "unauthorized by the Constitution ... to go beyond the line of defense." Every step of the way, he held to this conviction and waited for congressional approval before attacking. Gradually, in at least ten different statutes, Congress authorized offensive measures, culminating in a victory for the United States.

To say then, as Rubin does, that Jefferson thought he had the authority to make a "minimal strike" of the sort that Obama is contemplating is completely false. He explicitly said otherwise, that he did not have that authority. If Obama followed Jefferson as a model, then he would show Congress and the Constitution the same level of respect that Jefferson did. That means seeking congressional approval before launching an attack, no matter how "minimal."

Carney's Twisted Logic: Syria using chemical weapons is a "threat" to the US and justifies war

The White House is currently preparing the public for a strike on Syria, and part of that preparation involves heading off accusations that the president is abusing his powers. As Obama himself said when he was still a candidate, "the President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." Everyone knows this and everyone knows that Congress won't approve a military strike on Syria, which is why Obama hasn't asked Congress to convene on the matter. That leaves the White House only one option: to re-define "imminent threat to the nation" to include whatever it wants, such as a civil war in a land thousands of miles away. Here is the Guardian's live-blog of the relevant exchange:

Carney is asked about Obama's statement as a candidate in 2007 of his belief that a president may only take unilateral war action, without congressional approval, in cases of "an actual and imminent threat" to the United States. Does the US face such a threat? Carney replies in the affirmative: "Allowing [the asserted chemical attack] to take place without a response would present a significant... threat to the United States," Carney says.

This sounds remarkably like something from the Bush era, and it deserves widespread condemnation for its twisted logic. The Obama administration clearly hasn't learned from Bush's mistakes, or it wouldn't be leading us into yet another unpopular war on flimsy legal grounds.

Of course, some people will forgive the White House simply because they want to support the Syrian rebels. But that is a separate issue. Even if one supports a military strike on Syria, one can still condemn the illegality of it. In the present scenario, the president simply does not have the legal authority to do what he is about to do, and this should alarm anyone who wants to avoid re-living the past. We must hold our government officials accountable -- especially when their reasoning is as irrational as Carney's -- if we want to live in a lawful society. Allowing this administration to so flagrantly abuse its powers would be an astonishing disavowal of the rule of law.