Since when does the UN authorize the US to go to war?

Andrew C. McCarthy says Go to Congress first before warring against Libya.

Our Constitution vests Congress with the power to declare war. That authority cannot be delegated to an international tribunal that lacks political accountability to the American people. The decision to go to war is the most significant one a body politic can make. Thus the Framers designed our system to make certain that the responsible officials are answerable to the people whose lives are at stake and who are expected to foot the bills.

and concludes

But there should be no debating that absent a hostile invasion of our country, a forcible attack against our interests, or a clear threat against us so imminent that Americans may be harmed unless prompt action is taken, the United States should not launch combat operations without congressional approval.

But James V. Capua in Obama and the Libya decision has a different take.

Now at first glance it might appear he is merely being cautious – limiting our exposure to minimize any unfortunate foreign or domestic fallout should the television images get unpleasant, but one cannot help but suspect that the motive is less to minimize the US role than it is to exalt that of the UN and other supra-national organizations, such as the Arab League, and all of the NGO camp followers that normally feed off such international coalitions.

Additionally, this action promises finally to use American military power in the kind of international relief and social service agency capacity Obama’s internationalist foreign policy team would like it to be, its mission unsullied by grubby considerations of national interest. One observer has already compared it to the international intervention in Kosovo, intervention that delivered the Kosovars into the hands of UN and EU caretakers, despite their declaration of independence.

[..]

Even more significantly Obama’s world view requires victims to be serviced, and not winners to be supported. As long as the Libyan rebels had a chance to prevail, they were of little value to a messianic narcissist bent on removing the “Incomplete” from his Nobel Peace Prize citation. Pitiful, battered, pleading Libyans huddled around Benghazi are the prerequisite for making this this intervention work politically. In just the same way Obama and Pelosi needed the image of sick, desperate, hard up Americans to make the case for ObamaCare, the Stimuli, and financial services “reform.”

[..]

War without victory, intervention that produces dependency, Americans shouldering the burdens but obscured in a fog of UN acronyms, a maze of rules of engagement and process that squeezes every last bit of spirit and motivation out of warriors, it may not be a strategy, but it sure as hell explains the motivation.

Since when does the UN authorize the US to go to war?

Since one half of our fellow Americans believes in one world without borders and at least one half of the remainder do not care.

Do you remember how proud Bush Sr. was when he created a coalition that liberated Kuwait. It's been 20 years, a full generation, ago.

Everyone and his dog thinks nowadays in collectivist terms: as long as we sat down 'round table, shared our feelings, and came to a consensus --- all is well! Principles, our Constitution, the gradual submission of our courts to foreign ones --- all be d-mned 'cause we reached a consensus.

It is all about some delusional touchy-feely thing. Has someone, whether Europeans, UN, our government, even tried to tell us whom we are supporting in Libya or what kind of structure they see will emerge? The point is not whether to agree with their opinion but what is that opinion? Not a word of reasoning, but all governments are beating themselves in their populist chests, "We want to defend the pe-e-o-o-ple of Libya." Yep, all 50 tribes from each other.

I did see a point for us to be in Iraq, although I thought that Bush did a terrible job of communicating the reason for and progress in that war. But this is shear madness. I am still struggling to explain why conservatives, including Sarah Palin, would even think a second about supporting attacks on Libya. But they blame the President for not doing enough.

G-d help this country. I do think we are at the first stages of a thorough redefinition of the world, similar to the one that occurred after WW I. We may not even recognize our own country in a just a couple of years.

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