What feels good and what is morally or legally defensible are often not quite the same things. For example, it is difficult to find any reason to have sympathy for Qadaffi in Libya and more than ample reason to be inspired by the struggle for democracy across the Middle East. So, seeing the European powers and America rush into Libya with guns blazing, playing calvalry to the beleaguered resistance has a certain movie hero appeal.
But here’s the thing: its grossly illegal for the President of the United States to do what Barack Obama has chosen to do in aiding Europe as he himself has previously acknowledged. Yet in the Survey USA poll released today, nowhere in the opinion questions is even the hint that what has transpired was at all illegal:
I’m sure that intervening in Libya is the right thing to do, both for moral and political reasons, as one commenter on Talking Points Memo recently pointed out. But in doing so, the President is violating the law. And nobody seems interested in that. Guess it must just be different with a Democratic president?
