James Traub seemed a little bummed in a Sunday New York Times op-ed ("The End of American Intervention?," 2/18/10), that military cuts and changing priorities will mean fewer humanitarian interventions in America's future.

So we must accept, if uneasily, the future which now seems to lie before us: We will do less good in the world, but also less harm.

A leading advocate of "humanitarian intervention," Traub doesn't waste many words on the "harm" produced the by two decades of them, but he seems pretty sure about the "good." For instance, he writes that the post-Cold War period "raised the question of whether and when we would resort to force," a question he says was answered "when the Clinton administration felt compelled to respond to political chaos in Haiti and mass violence in the Balkans. Force could be used in pursuit of justice."

Traub doesn't mention that Clinton's Haiti intervention promoted anti-democratic forces (Extra! Update, 12/94) and that U.S. interference eventually scuttled that nation's democracy (Extra!, 7-8/06), bringing more chaos and bloodshed. Or that the bombing in the Balkans resulted in even more deadly recriminations against the people the US/NATO forces were allegedly protecting (Extra!, 1/08).

In fact, a close look at Traub's record shows he is generally supportive of U.S. military adventures whether they are dressed up with the "'humanitarian" label or not. From his lofty perches at the New York Times, Foreign Policy and elsewhere, Traub has seldom met an intervention he couldn't embrace. He supported early on an intervention in Darfur  (PBS Frontline interview (11/20/10) and Kyrgyzstan ("Not Too Late to Save Kyrgyzstan,'' Foreign Policy, 6/22/10).

But he was willing to scuttle set aside the "humanitarian" qualification to get at Libya, as he wrote in a Foreign Policy piece last year (3/11/11) headlined "Stepping In: Libya Doesn't Meet Any of the Criteria for a Humanitarian Intervention. We Should Do It Anyway."

The U.S. attack on Iraq in 2003 was launched over supposed weapons of mass destruction, but in a 2005 book review (New York Times, 10/30/05), Traub tried to argue that the Iraq War was started for humanitarian reasons, that "the case for war did not actually depend on the threat of imminent attack--even if the White House said otherwise."

But even the premise of Traub's Times op-ed, that the future will necessarily see fewer U.S. interventions, seems suspect. For instance, he doesn't mention the U.S.'s expanding use of drone missile strikes, or the increasing number of nations in which U.S. special forces are deployed--while it was 60 nations at end of the Bush administration, according to Nick Turse (Tomdispatch, 8/3/11), "By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120."

According to Traub, the White House is currently pivoting away from the Middle East to prioritize the Pacific and China. Reflecting on the challenge of China, Traub writes, with no apparent irony:

China is an emerging power, and once having found their footing, emerging powers usually seek to expand at the expense of their neighbors. The world is accustomed to dealing with this kind of problem, which involves persuading the bumptious power that its interests lie in cooperation rather than in confrontation.

But who's going to persuade a bumptious United States to abandon its policies of constant confrontation?

The Sunday New York Times (12/18/11) featured a powerful investigation of civilian casualties resulting from the NATO war in Libya--casualties that, to hear NATO officials tell it, maybe don't even exist.

The Times' C.J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt report:

But an on-the-ground examination by The New York Times of airstrike sites across Libya--including interviews with survivors, doctors and witnesses, and the collection of munitions remnants, medical reports, death certificates and photographs--found credible accounts of dozens of civilians killed by NATO in many distinct attacks. The victims, including at least 29 women or children, often had been asleep in homes when the ordnance hit.

The Times even took its research--based on a small number of incidents--to NATO, which seemed to change its story immediately:

Two weeks after being provided a 27-page memorandum from the Times containing extensive details of nine separate attacks in which evidence indicated that allied planes had killed or wounded unintended victims, NATO modified its stance.

"From what you have gathered on the ground, it appears that innocent civilians may have been killed or injured, despite all the care and precision," said Oana Lungescu, a spokeswoman for NATO headquarters in Brussels. "We deeply regret any loss of life."

The Times reports that  it "found significant damage to civilian infrastructure from certain attacks for which a rationale was not evident or risks to civilians were clear." The paper also noted that many witnesses talked about "warplanes restriking targets minutes after a first attack, a practice that imperiled, and sometimes killed, civilians rushing to the wounded." That is a tactic often associated with terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda.

The Times also offers a sickening glimpse into the denial of NATO leaders after civilians were killed in an airstrike in Tripoli:

Initially, NATO almost acknowledged its mistake. "A military missile site was the intended target," an alliance statement said soon after. "There may have been a weapons system failure which may have caused a number of civilian casualties."

Then it backtracked. Kristele Younes, director of field operations for Civic, the victims' group, examined the site and delivered her findings to NATO. She met a cold response. "They said, 'We have no confirmed reports of civilian casualties,'"  Ms. Younes said.

The reason, she said, was that the alliance had created its own definition for "confirmed": Only a death that NATO itself investigated and corroborated could be called confirmed. But because the alliance declined to investigate allegations, its casualty tally by definition could not budge--from zero.

If you recall the corporate media coverage of the war while it was happening, Libyan leaders were churning out laughably clumsy propaganda about civilian deaths.  "Libya Stokes Its Machine Generating Propaganda" was the June 7 headline of a New York Times story by John Burns, who scoffed at the "nightly propaganda tour" of the Libyan capitol. It seemed obvious at the time that Burns and his ilk were offended by by the Libyan government's inability to lie as effectively as the NATO generals.

The Times also investigated August airstrikes that it termed "NATO's bloodiest known accidents in the war"--a series of strikes on buildings in the town of Majer:

The attack began with a series of 500-pound laser-guided bombs, called GBU-12s, ordnance remnants suggest. The first house, owned by Ali Hamid Gafez, 61, was crowded with Mr. Gafez's relatives, who had been dislocated by the war, he and his neighbors said.

The bomb destroyed the second floor and much of the first. Five women and seven children were killed; several more people were wounded, including Mr. Gafez's wife, whose her lower left leg had to be amputated, the doctor who performed the procedure said.

Minutes later, NATO aircraft attacked two buildings in a second compound, owned by brothers in the Jarud family. Four people were killed, the family said.

Several minutes after the first strikes, as neighbors rushed to dig for victims, another bomb struck. The blast killed 18 civilians, both families said.

The death toll has been a source of confusion. The Qaddafi government said 85 civilians died. That claim does not seem to be credible. With the Qaddafi propaganda machine now gone, an official list of dead, issued by the new government, includes 35 victims, among them the late-term fetus of a fatally wounded woman the Gafez family said went into labor as she died.

The Zlitan hospital confirmed 34 deaths. Five doctors there also told of treating dozens of wounded people, including many women and children.

The airstrikes in Majer were discussed by FAIR in an August 18 media advisory, where it was noted that several reports talked about a death toll of about 30. The deaths were barely covered at all. As we pointed out, the Paper of Record did not think much at the time:

The New York Times (8/10/11) ran a 170-word version of a Reuters dispatch which noted: "There was no evidence of weapons at the farmhouses, but there were no bodies there, either. Nor was there blood."

Corporate media were more offended by inflated Libyan claims about civilian casualties than they were about the false denials coming from the people doing the killing. What's worse, to kill people and then deny that you did so, or to overstate how many people your enemies were killing? Many reporters--too many--seemed to think the latter was the more serious crime.

As one would expect, corporate media reacted to the developments in Libya by turning to one of their favorite sources: Republican Sen. John McCain. He was on CNN this morning (and last night as well), and odds are that he'll be on a  Sunday show.

McCain's line on Libya is that the White House should have waged a more aggressive war.  If any of these outlets wanted to challenge him on his record on Libya, all they would need to do is talk about this ancient newspaper article from August 2009:

Or perhaps this item from Politico, from way back in August of this year:

Fox host Bill O'Reilly knows a thing or two about boundaries.

As he told his TV audience Monday night, some "far-left" radicals crossed the line on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a blog post about how some Republican politicians turned the attacks into a "wedge issue," and referred to George W. Bush and Rudolph Giuliani as "fake heroes."

O'Reilly's reaction: Krugman is "insulting his country on the anniversary of 9/11. That is truly despicable."

O'Reilly had a little left in tank, so he went after former Times reporter Chris Hedges for writing this:

Our brutality and triumphalism, the byproducts of nationalism and our infantile pride, revived the jihadist movement.... We descended to its barbarity. We became terrorists, too.

O'Reilly got down to his point:

The reason I am even pointing out the rantings of these far-left loons is that some of their more moderate confederates do not condemn the statements. I mean, the New York Times actually pays Krugman to spout this stuff. Yeah, we have freedom of speech, but there's also a responsibility in the journalistic and political communities, is there not?

Sure, let's talk about media figures using responsible rhetoric. Let's start with Bill O'Reilly's call for brutal attacks on a number of countries right after 9/11:

Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, the channel's most popular host, declared on his September 17 broadcast that if the Afghan government did not extradite Osama bin Laden to the U.S., "the U.S. should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble--the airport, the power plants, their water facilities and the roads." O'Reilly went on to say:

This is a very primitive country. And taking out their ability to exist day to day will not be hard. Remember, the people of any country are ultimately responsible for the government they have. The Germans were responsible for Hitler. The Afghans are responsible for the Taliban. We should not target civilians. But if they don't rise up against this criminal government, they starve, period.

O'Reilly added that in Iraq, "their infrastructure must be destroyed and the population made to endure yet another round of intense pain.... Maybe then the people there will finally overthrow Saddam." If Libya's Moammar Gadhafi does not relinquish power and go into exile, "we bomb his oil facilities, all of them. And we mine the harbor in Tripoli. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out. We also destroy all the airports in Libya. Let them eat sand."

Lucky for O'Reilly, there are few sanctions in corporate media--at Fox or anywhere else--for that kind of bloodthirsty rhetoric.

Documents discovered in Libya suggest a close relationship between the Libyan government and the CIA. The New York Times described it this way on September 3:

TRIPOLI, Libya -- Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya's former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the Libyan intelligence service -- most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country's reputation for torture.

And then today (9/6/11) the Times put it this way:

The cooperation appeared to be far greater with the American intelligence agency, which sent terrorism suspects to Libya for questioning at least eight times, despite the country's reputation for torture. Britain sent at least one suspect, according to the documents.

As  Glenn Greenwald pointed out on Twitter (in fewer characters), the whole point of rendition was to send prisoners to countries the United States knew would treat them a certain way. It wasn't a series of accidents. In other words, the CIA used Libya not despite its reputation for torture, but because of it.

FAIR editor Jim Naureckas tweeted recently, "NATO's installation of an Al Qaeda-friendly government in Libya is one of 2011's most underreported stories." He's got a point. The Washington Post today published a pretty interesting look at how the Libyan government viewed the jihadist threat, thanks to some documents recovered in Tripoli:

The documents were uncovered days after the regime fell to rebel fighters led in part by a self-proclaimed former Islamist, Abdelkarim Belhadj. He has declared himself the leader of the "Tripoli Brigade" that spearheaded the defeat of Gadhafi loyalists in the capital. Belhadj is the former commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an Islamist organization that fought alongside Afghan insurgents against Russian occupation in the 1980s.

So what does the U.S. government have to say about this? Plenty--but you can't quote them by name:

U.S. officials on Tuesday did not dispute Belhadj's Islamist roots but played down the connections.

"Some members of LIFG in the past had connections with Al-Qaeda in Sudan, Afghanistan or Pakistan, and others dropped their relationship with Al-Qaeda entirely," said a senior U.S. official who closely tracks Islamic terrorist organizations. "It seems from their statements and support for establishing a democracy in Libya that this faction of LIFG does not support Al-Qaeda. We'll definitely be watching to see whether this is for real, or just for show."

The official insisted on anonymity in discussing sensitive case files about terrorist organizations.

That seems like a pretty flimsy rationale for granting a source anonymity.

Fareed Zakaria cheers the Libya War in Time magazine this week for not following the Iraq model:

It has been prosecuted with the memory of the Iraq war firmly in mind. Only this time the approach has been to view the last war as a negative example. The international coalition--and even the Libyan opposition--is doing pretty much the opposite of what was done in Iraq.

Zakaria explains that Obama "was clearly trying to avoid the mistakes of Iraq." Among the mistakes the Bush administration made:

Had UN weapons inspectors been given more time in the spring of 2003, the UN Security Council might well have endorsed the plan. Countries like India were seriously considering sending tens of thousands of peacekeeping troops, but only if there was a UN-blessed operation with a U.S. commander who also wore a UN hat (as was the case in Bosnia). But these were seen as petty, legalistic annoyances, and the operation felt like an American one from start to finish.

Zakaria can write these things because his message during the run-up to the Iraq War was, "Let the inspections do their work!"

Not exactly.

In the December 2, 2002 Newsweek, Zakaria warned that the inspectors weren't likely to find weapons because Iraq had gotten so good at hiding their WMDs:

Having gotten the inspectors back into Iraq with unfettered access, the Bush administration had better brace itself for the most likely outcome--they will find nothing. Don't get me wrong. Iraq is surely producing weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations and the United States have accumulated powerful evidence of this over the past decade, including testimony from Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, about Iraq's biological weapons. But Iraq has become increasingly expert at dispersing and hiding these facilities, which are often small enough to fit into a bathroom or a van.

Zakaria explained that "the administration must force a crisis"--using the inspections as a way to force the war to begin:

Washington's hope is that in one of these many tests, Iraq will reveal that it is not cooperating and thus pave the way for military action. The inspectors will not find weapons but they might well find noncompliance.

Time is short. If events do not come to a head soon after December 8, the pressure for action will dissipate and the weather will make conflict impossible until next fall. And you cannot replay this movie.

A few weeks later (2/17/03), Zakaria was worried that the United States might lose face. He asked Newsweek readers to imagine what kind of world it would be if inspections were allowed to drag on just because some other countries demanded solid evidence:

But right now with Iraq, the need to maintain resolve seems obvious. Whatever one's initial views about taking on Iraq--and I have been for it--I cannot see how America can back down without damaging its, well, credibility.

Imagine the situation. A week from now, pressured by France, Germany and Russia, the United States decides to give the inspectors more time. It announces that, come to think of it, Saddam isn't that much of a threat. Though the president of the United States has said repeatedly that he would have "zero tolerance" for Iraqi deception, he didn't really mean it. When Colin Powell persuaded the United Nations to pass a resolution telling Saddam that he had a "final" opportunity to disarm or face "serious consequences," it was a bluff. (The "serious consequences" turn out to be that the United Nations sends in a few dozen more inspectors.) What would happen the next time the United States makes threats?

Luckily for people like Zakaria, damaged credibility isn't a concern for them. He'll still be considered an A-list foreign affairs pundit, no matter how wrong he's been about things that really matter.

Today's New York Times has a story by David Kirkpatrick and Rod Norland running down the exaggerations and misinformation that have been spread throughout the Libya War. There's been "spin from all sides," they report. Gadhafi's exaggerations are well-known, but this passage is rather striking:

Still, the rebels have offered their own far-fetched claims, like mass rapes by loyalist troops issued tablets of Viagra. Although the rebels have not offered credible proof, that claim is nonetheless the basis of an investigation by the International Criminal Court.

And there is the mantra, with racist overtones, that the Gadhafi government is using African mercenaries, which rebels repeat as fact over and over. There have been no confirmed cases of that; supposedly there are many African prisoners of war being held in Benghazi, but conveniently journalists are not allowed to see them. There are, however, African guest workers, poorly paid migrant labor, many of whom, unarmed, have been labeled mercenaries.

So stories about African mercenaries are a racist mantra? If that's the case,  then point a finger at media outlets like the New York Times. While the warnings about mass rapes and mercenaries  fueled the supporters of the NATO bombing,  few reporters have detailed--mostly notably Patrick Cockburn in the Independent--that there was never solid evidence to support them.  They were nonetheless a regular part of the media coverage of the war, as I pointed out in a recent piece in Extra!:

A February 24 Washington Post editorial thundered, "Mr. Gadhafi has unleashed an orgy of bloodshed in the capital, Tripoli, using foreign mercenaries and aircraft to attack his own people." The day before, the New York Times editorial page (2/23/11) announced that in Tripoli "pro-government forces, relying heavily on mercenaries, were massacring demonstrators." The Times added that "there were reports of warplanes and helicopters being used to attack civilians"--though the paper did note that "authoritative information was difficult to come by."

"Gadhafi's brutal side has emerged once again," reported ABC's Martha Raddatz (World News, 2/22/11). "This time, flying in cargo planes full of African mercenaries, who don’t even speak the language, to do his dirty work. Trained killers gunning down residents and protesters in cold blood."

And those "racist overtones" were fairly common in the pages of the New York Times. From February 22:

By Monday night, witnesses said, the streets of Tripoli were thick with special forces loyal to Colonel Gadhafi as well as mercenaries. Roving the streets in trucks, they shot freely as planes dropped what witnesses described as ''small bombs'' and helicopters fired on protesters....

Two residents said planes had been landing for 10 days ferrying mercenaries from African countries to an air base in Tripoli. The mercenaries had done much of the shooting, which began Sunday night, they said. Some forces were using particularly lethal, hollow-point bullets, they said.

February 23:

Witnesses said groups of heavily armed militiamen and mercenaries from other African countries cruised the streets in pickup trucks, spraying crowds with machine-gun fire.

February 24:

Distrustful of even his own generals, Colonel Gadhafi has for years quietly built up this ruthless and loyal force. It is made up of special brigades headed by his sons, segments of the military loyal to his native tribe and its allies, and legions of African mercenaries he has helped train and equip. Many are believed to have fought elsewhere, in places like Sudan, but he has now called them back.

It's worth noting that David Kirkpatrick, co-author of today's piece, also co-authored all of the articles excerpted above.

One has to wonder if the Times is changing the story now because they believe the war is over. What better time to start exercising skepticism than now?

A New York Times piece by C.J. Chivers (7/13/11) presents a scary picture of Libyan rebel behavior:

Rebels in the mountains in Libya's west have looted and damaged four towns seized since last month from the forces of Col. Muammar el-Gadhafi, part of a series of abuses and apparent reprisals against suspected loyalists that have chased residents of these towns away, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

The looting included many businesses and at least two medical centers that, like the towns, are now deserted and bare.

Rebel fighters also beat people suspected of being loyalists and burned their homes, the organization said....

Some of the abuses, Human Rights Watch said, were directed against members of the Mashaashia tribe, which has long supported Colonel Gadhafi.

Chivers later writes:

Rebel conduct in the war has been mixed. Many captured pro-Gadhafi soldiers have received medical treatment in rebel hospitals and have been kept in detention centers that nongovernment organizations have been allowed to visit.

But Colonel Gadhafi's soldiers have also been beaten at the point of capture, and some have been shot, including several prisoners in the besieged city of Misurata who were shot through the feet, either as a punishment or as a means to prevent escape.

Rebels have also been seen by journalists repeatedly firing makeshift rocket launchers indiscriminately into territory or towns held by the Gadhafi forces.

But as if to try to repair some of the PR damage, the New York Times follows that with this:

Such rebels actions, however, have paled next to the abuses of Colonel Gadhafi's forces, which have fired on unarmed demonstrators and used artillery, rocket batteries and mortars against many rebel-held cities and towns.

Phones taken from dead or wounded soldiers have yielded images that strongly suggested that some of Colonel Gadhafi’s units have executed detainees.

The colonel's forces have also ransacked and looted homes and businesses on many fronts throughout the war.

So the real abuses of the war are by Gadhafi, who's attacked civilians, fired indiscriminately into residential areas, executed detainees and looted homes and businesses.

The alert reader will notice that these are the exact same crimes the Times has just said the rebels have been committing.

See "Gadhafi's Cluster Bombs--and Uncle Sam's" (FAIR Blog, 4/16/11) for another example of Chivers' skillful employment of the double standard.

There is growing Congressional opposition to the Libya war. Two House votes this month sought to challenge the White House policy-- one of which passed by a wide margin.  On Saturday (6/18/11) Charlie Savage reported in the New York Times that the Office of Legal Counsel's advice to Obama was that he needed to comply with the War Powers Act. Obama rejected their advice, which as Savage reported is "extraordinarily rare."

Congress will be taking up more Libya debates this week, with a potential vote scheduled to stop the funding of the war. And the recent Republican presidential debate showed that many candidates are speaking out against the Libya policy.

That's a lot to work with for the Sunday shows. But they mostly skipped the chance to present serious criticism of the White House. On NBC's Meet the Press (6/19/11), viewers heard from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who wants a more aggressive war:

The War Powers Act is unconstitutional, not worth the paper it's written on.... The president's done a lousy job of communicating and managing our involvement in Libya, but I will be no part of an effort to defund Libya or to try to cut off our efforts to bring Gadhafi down.  If we fail against Gadhafi, that's the end of NATO.  Egypt's going to be overrun and the 'Mad Dog of the Mideast,' what Ronald Reagan called Gadhafi, if he survives this, you're going to have double the price of oil that you have today because he will take the whole region and put it in, into chaos.... So from my Republican point of view, the president needs to step up his game in Libya, but Congress should sort of shut up and not empower Gadhafi.

And the Democratic view, courtesy of Senator Dick Durbin:

The president's doing the right thing.  What we have here, this would be 'Butcher of Benghazi,' Gadhafi, needs to be stopped so he doesn't kill innocent people.  The president brought together the Arab League, the United Nations, and NATO and said we are going to play a supportive rule--role, no ground troops.  We're going to have a limited duration conflict to stop Gadhafi.  That was the right thing.  But I think that the War Powers Act and Constitution make it clear that hostilities by remote control are still hostilities.... What we should do is act on a timely basis to pass congressional authorization under the War Powers Act.  I reject the Republican approach, which has been suggested by Speaker Boehner and others to cut off the troops.  It would give solace to Gadhafi.  It would undermine the people who are resisting him in that nation, and I agree completely with Lindsey Graham.  It would call into question the future of NATO.

So while they differ on War Powers Act-- and on which nickname to use for Gadhafi-- they both support the war.

As did NBC reporter Richard Engel, who said this during the program's roundtable segment:

I just came from Libya before I came here, and the fact of the matter is the war in Libya right now is not very serious, that NATO is not doing a terribly good job.  The rebels need a lot more help.  The bombing campaign in Tripoli barely exists.  Every once in a while there's a few bombs on mostly empty compounds, and people go about their lives more or less unaffected.  It's not the kind of thing that's going to drive Gadhafi from power.  And a, a lot of European nations who are now trying to lead this, this fight, which--and are, and are struggling to do it, are looking at this debate in--within the--in the United States to end the U.S. support for NATO.  If the U.S. ended its support for NATO in Libya, NATO really is dead.

It's rather odd for a reporter to offer policy advice like that. One has to wonder if NBC would be pleased if Engel were speaking out against the war.

It wasn't just Meet the Press, though. Fox News Sunday featured outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who defended the war (and the White House's legal explanation for it). And ABC's This Week took the  apparent upswing in antiwar sentiment to interview pro-war Senator John McCain. A short comment from Libya War critic George Will could be heard during the roundtable.

One of the chief criticisms of the Sunday show is that they're way too obsessed with Beltway posturing and politics. That's obviously true, but in this case there would seem to be a lot happening in that world to push back against the war-- and the shows seem to think their role is to man the ramparts.

From the L.A. Times (6/9/11):

A tattered tent, shreds of carpet and other scorched debris were all that were left of a favored retreat of Moammar Gadhafi just outside the Libyan capital, the aftermath of what appeared to be a NATO bombing run.

Was the usually idyllic nature preserve a "command and control" center used by the Libyan military? Or was this an example of NATO attempting to assassinate the longtime Libyan dictator?

A NATO official reached in Naples, Italy, late Wednesday emphasized that the Western alliance does not target people for killings, and the official would not confirm that North Atlantic Treaty Organization warplanes had even struck the site Tuesday. "It doesn't sound like that would be the subject of our attention, so I'm not sure what you were shown there," said the official, who under NATO rules could not be identified by name.

Remember, it's Libya's pathetic PR that gets ridiculed in the U.S. press. NATO officials are granted anonymity to make their spectacularly implausible claims.

New York Times reporter Rod Norland (5/29/11) gave readers a lighter look at the war in Libya from rebel-controlled Benghazi. Some versions of the story were actually headlined, "In Benghazi, Warmth for West Doesn't Come from Burning Flags"--which pretty well captures the tone of the piece.

Norland observes:

Americans and, for that matter, all Westerners are treated hereabouts with a warmth and gratitude rarely seen in any Muslim country--even those with 100,000 American troops--in probably half a century or more.

I'm not sure there's a reliable survey of Muslim hospitality, but the idea that even Iraqis or Afghans aren't fond of Americans despite our massive military presence in their countries--well, that's pretty close to Bill O'Reilly territory.

He also writes:

The pizza, too, is respectable, especially at Pisa Pizza in Benghazi, where the pies are about a yard in diameter. Proof that Italian colonialism accomplished something after all.

Funny! You know what else the Italian occupation accomplished? Concentration camps, death and disease. But it's harder to milk those things for laughs.

On Sunday George Will wrote a strong Washington Post column about Obama, the  Libya War and the law:

In a bipartisan cascade of hypocrisies, a liberal president, with the collaborative silence of most congressional conservatives, is traducing the War Powers Resolution.

Enacted in 1973 over President Nixon's veto, the WPR may or may not be wise. It is, however, unquestionably a law, and Barack Obama certainly is violating it.

"Liberals are situational ethicists regarding presidential warmaking," Will explained, going on to suggest that George W. Bush would have been treated much differently than Obama. And Will had harsh words for John McCain:

"No president," says Sen. John McCain, "has ever recognized the constitutionality of the War Powers Act, and neither do I. So I don’t feel bound by any deadline." Oh? No law is actually a law if presidents and senators do not "recognize" it? Now, there is an interesting alternative to judicial review, and an indicator of how executive aggrandizement and legislative dereliction of duty degrade the rule of law.

So liberals are inconsistent, and John McCain is making an absurd argument about the Act being unconstitutional.

George Will's record on the War Powers Act, though, has been all over the map (not unlike his position--or positions--on the filibuster). Here's where he seems to have started:

September 15, 1983:

President Nixon was wrong to veto the War Powers Act, which Congress passed over his veto in 1973. A veto was too good for it. He should have mailed it back to Capitol Hill unsigned, with postage due, and with a note saying that although it always is entertaining to read Congress' opinions about constitutional construction, the Constitution clearly vests in the president the power to control the armed forces.

November 11, 1984:

Repeal of the War Powers Act. It is unwieldy, unclear and clearly unconstitutional as a derogation of the responsibilities of the commander in chief vested in the presidency and exercised by most occupants of that office. No president has yet quite complied with the act. Repeal would be the straightforward approach.

During the run up to the first Gulf War (11/15/90), Will seemed to be softening a bit, but his take still seemed pretty clear:

The War Powers Act is of dubious constitutionality and cumbersome formality, and the president's war of nerves with Iraq should not be undercut by a clock controlling when Congress must ratify or reject Desert Shield.

And then something seemed to switch. Under the headline "McCain's Honest Passion," Will expressed fondness (5/9/99) for McCain's anti-War Powers position during the Yugoslavia war, where he called on Bill Clinton to embrace his executive authority and wage as wide a war as he deemed necessary--including using U.S. ground forces.  The House of Representatives, on the other hand, wasn't so supportive--some Republicans cited the War Powers Act to oppose Clinton's bombing.

McCain was, in Will's estimation, getting things right:

McCain said he found himself in the "curious" but "not unexpected" position of defending the president's constitutional authority without the president's support. Although McCain thought his resolution constitutionally redundant, he offered it "in the forlorn hope that the president would take courage from it, and find the resolve to do his duty." Said McCain, "The president does not want the power he possesses by law because the risks inherent in its exercise have paralyzed him."

A week earlier the House, with an incoherence produced by the timidity of careerists, voted against declaring war, against supporting the air war, against withdrawal of U.S. forces, against use of ground troops without congressional approval and against stopping what they will not support. Many House Republicans embraced what McCain considers the War Powers Act's unconstitutional presumptions about the limits on presidential war-making.

Will went on to argue that "many House Republicans, claiming an authority Congress neither possesses constitutionally nor cares to exercise, embraced the Act."

Like George Will said, liberals need to figure out where they stand on the War Powers Act. Otherwise they just seem wildly inconsistent.

I was struck by the contrast between two passages I came across recently:

Misurata's population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people--including combatants--have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22--less than 3 percent--are women. If Gadhafi were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties.

--Alan J. Kuperman (Boston Globe, 4/14/11)

In a report to be published in tomorrow's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers have concluded that air strikes [in Iraq] by U.S.-led coalition forces have killed mostly women and children. Thirty-nine percent were children, while 46 percent were women.

--Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com, 4/15/09)

After nearly two months of NATO bombardment, the Libyan government's warfare in Misurata may have become more indiscriminate--a reminder of the often inhumane consequences of "humanitarian intervention." But it's striking to see what degree of violence against civilians is treated by U.S. corporate media as a compelling reason to take military action against an official enemy--compared to the much greater level of civilian killing that passes without much notice when it is committed by the United States itself.

Today the New York Times describes the state of the war in Libya:

WASHINGTON — NATO plans to step up attacks on the palaces, headquarters and communications centers that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi uses to maintain his grip on power in Libya, according to Obama administration and allied officials.

This "more energetic bombing campaign" included "a separate raid on Monday that temporarily knocked Libyan state television off the air."

As the Times' Thom Shanker and David Sanger explain:

Officials in Europe and Washington said the strikes were meant to reduce the Libyan government’s ability to harm civilians by eliminating, link by link, the command-and-communications and supply chains that are required for military operations.

That is obviously the justification you're going to hear from the people doing the bombing. Legally speaking, you are supposed to bomb targets that provide some military function--otherwise the attacks could be war crimes. Whether state television provides some concrete military advantage that would make journalists a legitimate target is a topic media outlets should discuss, for obvious reasons. But the Times seems willing to let the U.S./NATO explanations stand on their own.

But a more revealing admission comes later in the piece, when the Times talks about Kosovo and the lessons it teaches us about Libya:

Gen. John P. Jumper, who commanded United States Air Force units in Europe during the Kosovo campaign, recalled that allied "air power was getting its paper graded on the number of tanks killed"--even though taking out armored vehicles one by one was never going to halt "ethnic cleansing."

So NATO began to hit high-profile institutional targets in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, instead of forces in the field. Although they were legitimate military targets, General Jumper said, destroying them also had the effect of undermining popular support for the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic.

"It was when we went in and began to disturb important and symbolic sites in Belgrade, and began to bring to a halt the middle-class life in Belgrade, that Milosevic's own people began to turn on him," General Jumper said.

A military official is explaining that attacking certain civilian infrastructure can help to achieve a desired political outcome. That would seem to meet the conventional definition of terrorism, as violence directed against civilians for political ends.  It's not that is new information--NATO airstrikes in Belgrade were intended to harm civilians, and pundits cheered as this happened. But if the point is that the war in Libya is going to be more like Kosovo, this is disturbing.