[Peace-discuss] Obama's attack, like Bush's, is illegal

[C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss]

[Both should be impeached.  --CGE]

To the Editor [NYT]:

We concur with Bruce Ackerman (“Obama’s Betrayal of the Constitution,” Op-Ed, Sept. 12) and your editorial (“Legal Authority for Fighting ISIS,” Sept. 12) that President Obama must act within constitutional constraints upon announcing his intention to resort to force overseas against ISIS.

While the president must request and receive congressional approval within the strictures of the War Powers Resolution of 1973, as both Mr. Ackerman and your editorial rightly demand, neither Congress nor the president is free to violate the United Nations Charter’s prohibition “against the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Individual nations are bound by their international obligations regardless of their constitutional law. Thus, the reach of law here goes beyond the War Powers Resolution to the United Nations Charter.

We owe the existence of ISIS in part to the Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was in violation of the charter. President Obama now seems determined to match, or exceed, the lawlessness of that decision, which, without the establishment of proper checks on the president’s war powers, is likely to be repeated by the next president, and the one after that, with perpetual war (or worse) an assured outcome.

HOWARD FRIEL
NOAM CHOMSKY
EDWARD S. HERMAN
Northampton, Mass., Sept. 15, 2014

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