Obama Has Officially Adopted Bush's Iraq Doctrine

TIME ^ | April 6, 2016 | by Jack Goldsmith

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Last week the State Department's top lawyer, Brian Egan, gave an important but underreported speech that marked the final stage of the Obama administration’s normalization of once-controversial Bush-era doctrines about the conduct of war. Before a gathering of geeky international law-loving lawyers in Washington, D.C., Egan announced the Obama administration's official embrace of the same preemption doctrine that justified the invasion of Iraq.

Though the contexts for the Obama and Bush preemption principles differ, the principle is the same. But it is the Obama team's articulation of the principle that will be influential. Future presidents who want to use force in other nations won't invoke the doctrine used in the disastrous Iraq war. They will instead adopt the functionally identical principle that the Obama administration normalized and legitimated.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Jack Goldsmith is a Harvard Law School professor and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was an assistant attorney general in the administration of George W. Bush.

[Red Badger]

Legitimated?...............

[clearcarbon]

"Obama Has Officially Adopted Bush's Iraq Doctrine"

[libertylover]

Future presidents who want to use force in other nations won't invoke the doctrine used in the disastrous Iraq war. They will instead adopt the functionally identical principle that the Obama administration normalized and legitimated.

In case you can't translate that it says, "Time opposes anything a Republican president does but supports anything a Democrat does, even if they're the same thing.

And BTW, the Iraq war was only a disaster after Obama abandoned Iraq to ISIS.

[TigersEye]

The U.S. military has a lot more people in Iraq than it has been saying March 21, 2016 WaPo

The U.S. military has around 5,000 service members in Iraq, officials said on Monday, far more than previously reported, as the Obama administration quietly expands ground operations against the Islamic State.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Better late than never, but too late is still too late....