Reply to American Diehard Pacifist who is Against Intervention in Libya

I’m republishing this short piece that was written at the earliest stages of the “Intervention” by NATO and the U.S. in Libya, illustrating how wrong the Liberal-Pacifists were about the outcome of the intervention that led to the collapse of the Gaddafi dictatorship.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Distortion and lack of imagination are not a good way to make your case. On your first point, where in the world has there been even a blip of demonstrable opposition to the Coalition’s intervention in Libya? On your second point, only one bereft of a modicum of imagination cannot see that despite the fact that the “goal of the coalition” is not the “defeat of the dictator,” nonetheless the implementation of the no-fly zone by the Coalition nolens volens enervates the loyalist forces and invigorates the Opposition forces with the great potential to overthrow the dictator. On your third, isn’t a fact that Gaddafi and his military personnel fled the compound which was a command and military control centre just before it was hit by a tomahawk missile? And on your fourth and last point that Obama breached the constitution and should therefore be impeached, is a fiction and should be rejected as such. You deliberately and misleadingly leave out the sentence of the War Powers Act, 1973, which is relevant to the current military engagement of the U.S. in Libya. “The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires the president to notify (M.E.) Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days…without an authorization of the use of military force or a declaration of war.” Only at the passing of 60 days, and if he did not seek an authorized extension for the military deployment would Obama be in breach of the War Powers Act. It seems therefore to me that your ditty about Obama breaching the constitution and should be impeached, is out of tune with the reality of the situation.

You have said to me before that you are some sort of a musician playing the mandolin. It amuses me therefore to see why you switch your talent from ditties to war and strategy that are beyond the depth of a mandolin player.

Further, you will find out at your cost that the land of Australia is not only the land of the kangaroos but also the land of the boomerang that just struck you.

Lawyers Deliberate on Legitimacy of War While Islamists are about to Strike with Lethal Weapons

By Con George-Kotzabasis  

It is amusing to hear peripatetic academics deliberating in the midst of war the legitimacy of the war, as fanatic Islamist warriors are about to strike the West with lethal weapons and indeed, with nuclear ones, once they get hold of them. Such ‘deliberations’ place academics in the ludicrous position of Nero, in this case, playing their legalistic fiddle whilst the world is about to be burned.

No war can be prevented or stopped by the prescriptions and dicta of International Law, especially when one of its actors is completely irrational and truly believes that his Commander-in-Chief is Allahu Akbar. War creates its own legitimacy both for its aggressors and defenders and neither of them take notice of the pronouncements of International Law on the legal status of an ongoing conflict.

To paraphrase Thucydides, in a hostile world only the strong—not the just--who are prepared to use overwhelming force, have the right to indulge in hope.

Hence your argument before those historical facts is hopeless and inutile. Further, it commits Whitehead’s fallacy of misplaced concreteness as it substitutes the legalistic abstractness of war for the concrete reality of war. And more ominously such deliberations are strategically doltish, and indeed risky, as they tend to mislead and divide the people as to the justice of the war, in contrast to the absolute necessity of uniting them for the purpose of winning it against these irreconcilable fanatics.

Also, when you correctly state that the US declared war against Al Qaeda this declaration does not apply to ISIS, since the latter has no association with the former and was not involved in the attack of 9/11, and indeed the two groups are in conflict with each other, therefore the war against it is illegitimate, I’m afraid you lose the wood for the trees. The legitimacy of the war should not depend on the different religious and ideological nuances of the two groups but on their firm common goal of destroying the 'great Satan,' America, and the rest of the western world. It is this deadly existential threat that western leaders have to meet head-on.

The eminent German jurist and political philosopher, Carl Schmitt, has stated, that legal norms apply in normal circumstances but in emergency conditions the ‘non-legalistic’ decision of the ruling body to go to war is preponderant over the norm.