Shameful and Wrong for NATO Strike to Kill Gaddafi Grandchildren

I just want to express my outrage that a NATO air strike killed three of Gaddafi's grandchildren in Lybia.

Does not matter if this was intentional.  Does not matter if Gaddafi deserves to die.  Does even not matter if Gaddafi is in some sense responsible because he chose to be physically close to his grandchildren at the time of the strike.

What matters is that innocent lives were taken.  If the motive was to protect other innocent people, that does not matter either.  There is no system of ethics known to humanity which says it's ok to kill innocent people in order to protect other innocent people.

That the United States is fighting along side of NATO makes this even more repugnant to me.  I am an American, and I'm furious and ashamed that my country had any part in this.

There are bad people in the world.   There are murderers.  Some of them are in control of nations.  You don't stop them by becoming a murderer of innocent children yourself.

On the Road to Another Unconstitutional War?

Korea, Vietnam, Iraq1, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq2 all have something in common:  wars the US pursued without the Declaration of War explicitly required in our Constitution by both houses of Congress.   Call them military actions, joint efforts pursuant to UN resolutions, whatever.   Grant that they were justified, for security or ethical reasons, or not.   What they all have in common is that they were (and are) illegal.

And they by and large have not been very successful, with Vietnam the least, and Iraq and Afghanistan not very far behind.   Some of these started with small commitments of our military, others with massive "shock and awe".   But unlike World Wars 1 and 2 - the last two wars which we did declare and therefore pursued legally - we achieved no clear-cut victories.  Korea is still split, Vietnam went totally over to the adversary, and the fates of Iraq and Afghanistan are still in contention.  Only Serbia can be counted as the one sort-of success.

And now, President Obama has told us that we've moved to the verge of another unconstitutional war.  The US will help enforce a no-fly zone in Libya.  That means taking out Libyan air defenses and shooting down their planes, if necessary.  Very close to war - indeed, actually in a phase a war, by any reasonable standard.

Once again we'll be gambling - that his action turns out more like Serbia than Vietnam.

But we'd be better off not going down that road again at all.

*Noted added 19 March 2011:  And the US has just launched its first missile against Libya - so much for staying out of the action ...


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