UN Authorizes War

Thursday, March 17, 2011
UN Authorizes War
Posted by Sheldon Richman at 6:55 PM

"He who mounts a wild elephant goes where the wild elephant goes."

I thought of those words of Randolph Bourne, the Progressive who became disillusioned by his fellow Progressives' enthusiasm for U.S. entry into World War I, when I heard that the UN Security Council, led by the Obama administration, voted to authorize "all necessary measures" to protect civilians against Libyan Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

All necessary measures.

Advocates of liberty, not to mention of decency, wish the Libyan people the best in their courageous struggle against the brutal bastard Qaddafi, but that is no justification for U.S. intervention, even under UN cover. A hundred reasons could be cited, but two points should suffice: The government has no moral right to insert the American people into another Mideast war. Moreover, whatever the Obama administration does will have the foreseeable even if unintended effect of killing and maiming innocent people. When you go to war you release an evil, unpredictable genie from the bottle, and it's difficult to put him back in. In the meantime you do a lot of damage. We need no more enemies in the Muslim world. The U.S. government has wreaked enough havoc -- has spilled enough blood -- there to last a long while.

John Quincy Adams has been quoted in similar contexts countless times, but evidently not enough. America, the then-secretary of state said in 1821,

goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.

She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....

She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....

If those words ever really described America, they certainly haven't for a long while. So let's work for a future in which that description applies. We must rise in protest to prevent the Nobel Peace Prize-winning president from making more war.

http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2011/03/un-authorizes-war.html