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Obama's War That Isn't a War

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:00:00 EDT

Since at least the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy has been drifting- comprising a series of ad hoc interventions absent a national consensus about when to use force and lacking an underlying set of reliable, core principles.

That drift continues with President Obama's speech about our war with Libya- and includes the simple fact that our commander in chief couldn't even acknowledge that we're in a war and that we've taken sides against someone he calls a "tyrant who murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world -- including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents."

Dropping bombs, shooting missiles, deploying massive amounts of personnel and power - all of these are generally understood as acts of war. But Obama can't admit that we're waging war because then he would
have to acknowledge what his critics correctly underscore: Constitutionally, he doesn't have a right to do this sort of thing unilaterally when the country isn't facing a clear and present danger.

We know this because of Obama himself. In 2007, while a US senator and presidential candidate, he flatly told The Boston Globe, "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

No president was worse at foreign policy than George W. Bush, who came to power amid promises of a "humble foreign policy" and then mired us in two intractable conflicts that even supporters grant were poorly executed under his command.

Yet even Bush pushed to get a fig leaf of authorization from Congress before the shooting began. Obama's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, instead brandished unanimity among NATO leaders as proof we were doing the right thing: "All 28 allies have...now authorized military authorities to develop an operations plan for NATO to take on the broader civilian protection mission under Resolution 1973." As if NATO, a Cold War alliance conceived to protect the free nations of Europe from a threat that went missing 20 years ago, is a substitute for, say, the American people and their elected representatives.

Who knows how long will be in Libya - whether under US or NATO command. It might be a few months or it might be many years. But this much is certain: Our actions there won't have been authorized by the American people. And they provide no guide to where we'll end up next.

Approximately 2.30 minutes. Written by Nick Gillespie. Shot and edited by Meredith Bragg.

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Using Cameras to Fight Human Rights Abuses: Yvette Alberdingk Thijm of WITNESS

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 10:00:00 EST

In 1988, musician and activist Peter Gabriel traveled the world with Amnesty International's "Human Rights Now!" tour. He brought a big, bulky camcorder with him and used it to interview victims of human rights abuses. Gabriel realized that capturing those stories made it harder for them to be forgotten, and that's what spurred him to found WITNESS, a Brooklyn-based human rights organization.

"The aim is always to turn a personal story of abuse into a powerful tool for justice," says Executive Director Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, who sat down with Reason.tv to discuss how WITNESS uses the power of video to fight human rights abuses around the world.

Approximately 6 minutes.

Interviewed by Hawk Jensen who also edited. Shot by Jim Epstein.

Additional footage provided by: WITNESS.ORG. Photo Credit: Kate Glicksberg

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Liberty for Africa: Q&A with Adedayo Thomas

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Spreading a message of liberty and free markets across Africa, where corruption and nepotism are depressingly common, is a daunting task - but not for Adedayo Thomas. Thomas, a Nigerian political activist and publisher of AfricaLiberty.org, has embarked on a cross-continent speaking tour to introduce to some of the most remotest areas of Africa to the ideas of libertarianism.

Recently Reason.tv's Micheal Moynihan sat down with Thomas to discuss how his ideology changed over time, how he's using African concepts to communicate the ideas of classical liberalism, and to discuss his favorite French philosopher, Frederic Bastiat.

Approximately five minutes.

Shot by Meredith Bragg and Dan Hayes. Edited by Joshua Swain.

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Demonizing DDT

dan.hayes@reason.org (Dan Hayes) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:00:00 EDT

In The Excellent Powder: DDT's Political and Scientific History, Richard Tren and Donald Roberts argue that the infamous insecticide is the world's greatest public-health success stories, saving millions of lives by preventing insect-borne disease. Unfortunately for those in areas still infested with mosquitoes and other flying bugs, DDT is also the world's most-misunderstood substance, the target of a decades-long scientifically ignorant and ideologically motivated campaign that has vastly limited its use and applications.

From Rachel Carson in the 1960s to contemporary critics, DDT has been the object of what Roberts, a professor of tropical public health at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, calls "scare campaigns" that link DDT to "theoretical harms to wildlife and human life that simply don't exist."

Dubbed "the excellent powder" by Winston Churchill for its life-saving qualities, DDT has the potential to transform the developing world from a malarial hell into something else again. Yet as Tren, the winner of the 2009 Julian L. Simon Award, warns, under current international conventions, global DDT production is scheduled to be halted in 2017, thereby consigning much of the world to less-effective and more-expensive alternatives that will consign millions of poor people to living hell.

Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie sat down with Tren and Roberts, who are part of Africa Fighting Malaria, to talk about how DDT got such a bad rap and what can be done to set the record straight.

Approximately 9.15 minutes. Shot by Meredith Bragg and Dan Hayes; edited by Hayes and Josh Swain.

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"It's Our Turn To Eat"

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:00:00 EDT

Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie recently sat down with Michela Wrong, author of It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower, a riveting and deeply disturbing account of John Githongo's tenure as Kenya's anti-corruption czar. Githongo made the mistake of taking his job title seriously—and quickly had to flee his homeland with evidence of wide-scale graft and tribal discrimination that has crippled Kenya since independence.

The author of I Didn't Do It For You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation and In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on The Brink of Disaster in Mobotu's Congo, Wrong brings a journalist's eye for detail to an unparalleled body of work that explores and explains why post-colonial Africa has struggled so greatly with economic, social, and political development.

"What the Kenyan case showed—and it's true of many African countries," says Wrong, who refuses to romanticize a continent she passionately cares about, "is that you cannot pretend to help a country if you do not cast a very critical eye on the politics of the day. And if you have a government that's busy stealing, there is no point in continuing to spout the sermon about helping and aid."

Approximately 10 minutes. Shot and edited by Meredith Bragg.

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The Reason.tv Talk Show, Episode 16

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:30:00 EDT

Reason.tv's Michael C. Moynihan and Nick Gillespie sit down with Peter Leeson, author of The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, and David Post, author of In Search of Jefferson's Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace, to discuss social contracts amongst pirates, Internet piracy, and whether or not 17th century pirates actually said "shiver me timbers."

Approximately 25 minutes.

For an audio podcast version, go here . For an archive of all Reason.tv Talk Shows, go here. Watch Nick Gillespie's interview with Peter Leeson here, and his interview with David Post here .

The Reason.tv Talk Show, Episode 8

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:00:00 EST

On January 16, Reason.tv's Michael C. Moynihan and Nick Gillespie sat down with Karol Boudreaux, a senior research fellow at The Mercatus Center's Enterprise Africa! project and Stephen Schwartz, head of the Center for Islamic Pluralism and author of the new book The Other Islam.

In a wide-ranging and freewheeling discussion, Boudreaux and Schwartz disussed developmental economics, the role of Islam in world politics, trade policy, and whether President Barack Obama represents a clear break with the past or continuity with it.

Go here for an audio podcast.

Go here for past episodes of the Reason.tv Talk Show.

Shot and edited by Dan Hayes.