Wednesday, January 24, 2018
America's "legal rationale" for being in Syria
AP writes today:
The Islamic State's retreat also has forced the U.S. to stretch thinner its legal rationale for operating in Syria. Doing so has raised delicate questions about whether Congress and the American people have truly signed off on a mandate for Syria that goes far beyond killing terrorists."Stretch thinner"? The U.S.' "legal rationale" for "operating" in Syria is so thin it's translucent, and that's just the rationale based on U.S. law. Under international law, the situation couldn't be clearer — the U.S. has troops in a foreign country without the invitation of that country, and that country did not attack the U.S. That is de facto illegal under international law, and a war crime. There simply isn't any argument about that.
What is surprising about this paragraph is that it is practically the only time you will ever see a reference to the legality of the U.S. occupying Syria at all; virtually all articles in the U.S. corporate press simply overlook that inconvenient fact.
And, while one can make the thinnest of cases that Congress has "signed off on a mandate for [killing terrorists in] Syria", there is simply no case that the "American people" ever did so. And even less of a case (if that's possible) that the American people signed off on a mandate that goes beyond that. In fact, Donald Trump's victory (albeit without a majority vote) argues exactly the opposite, since he explicitly claimed during his campaign that the only U.S. goal in Syria (or in Iraq) should be getting rid of ISIS (e.g., here: "Trump has said he wants to work with Russia on Syria to defeat ISIS and opposes overthrowing Assad.").
