With the recent  attempted assassination of Muammar Ghadaffi, NATO is  now worthy of the acronym:-

Not Another Terrorist Organisation

Stated seriously, the dual choices are of viewing the situation of the attempted assassination of Ghadaffi in abstracto or viewing it in concreto.

In abstracto, the United States, Britain  and France can be seen as having considerable military advantage over the Libyan state it is presently attacking. Likewise, with a UN Resolution in hand, namely UN Resolution 1973, one would think that it would not only be the de facto responsible thing to do by operating within the confines of Resolution 1973, but there remains a de jure legal obligation to conduct international relations within the confines of the established rules of international law. To the extent that a UN resolution was sought and obtained, there was an attempt to establish parameters for lawful international engagement against Libya. To that extent, in abstracto, the US/NATO powers have acted responsibly, but as we shall observe in concreto, the US/NATO have now dislodged the supporting beam of lawful credibility via their  most recent actions.

Before moving forward to the second limb, there is a need to observe that the United States has been trending towards reliance on its own domestic laws, inverting same against the standards of international law ( within which its own domestic laws should be congruent and compliant). Thus,  as with such self-styled contrivances  as "enemy combatants", the US  has sought to justify wanton disregard for international law.

The broad legal parameters permitting the use of lethal  force are for legitimate acts of law enforcement –and – in situations of self-defence ( see: UN Charter Article 51).

There are two sides to the argument – in abstracto. On one  side of the coin is  justification of acts of attack on a targeted leader because of alleged state sponsored terrorism. However,  "terrorism" finds itself classified as a crime.  The legal stretch which the US has been using is to misinterpret to seek justification for their own connivances  to use  excessive lethal and oftentimes indiscriminate force by classifying the individual criminal act of terrorism as an act of war. The other side of the coin is that  use of excessive force in situations of incursions into countries where asymmetrical warfare of resistance to US occupation is being waged, places the occupying forces at the disadvantage of facing guerilla warfare, thus the occupying forces seek  to validate and legitimate their actions against non-uniformed and non-governmental forces.

In concreto, the incident of Eichmann is a helpful case in point. Israel overstepped the boundaries of international law, sought justification on the basis of "hostes humanis generis" ( i.e. common enemies of humankind) and thus felt free to exercise universal jurisdiction. The UN Security Council did not deem the violation of sovereignty permissible and lawful.

What we are witnessing in Libya is, in very colloquial language – stretch – and over-reach. 'Stretch' in the sense of extending  Resolution  1973 to a situation that it was not designed to extend to. 'Overreach' in the sense of commencing with a Resolution that is lawful, but then carrying it well outside the boundaries of legality by launching, funding and actively supporting a civil war.

In a situation such as  that of the advancing forces of the US/NATO, operative words within the narrative of international law are ones such as "lawful" or "legal", "necessary", "proportionate" and "reasonable".

The very practical difficulty with the recent assassination attempt on the life of Colonel Mommar Ghadaffi is that the very arguments in abstraction for legal and civilized behavior amongst the family of nations of the world, is undermined by the excesses of military convenience in trying to murder the leader of a nation state.

The Hague Convention; Geneva Conventions; and customary international law all have a bearing on this most unlawful act.

The ultimate difficulty being faced henceforth is that the policing action permitted by Resolution 1973 does not, and did not extend to the launching of a war of aggression, which de facto has taken place in Libya under the auspices of US/NATO led forces. The false assumption is one of a lawful right to extend the Resolution to  justify unprovoked acts of warfare  on Libya. This has conceptually debased the original validity of the Resolution. Secondly, the implicit validation attempt of treating Ghadaffi as a lawful "terrorist target", de facto inverts any legitimacy that the US/NATO led mission might otherwise have had. The end result is that the legitimisation  of targeting  of heads of state of the Western powers, be this by way of state sponsored or non-state actors, such as  religiously or politically motivated individuals or groups will finally latch on to the "law of jungle rule" precedent of  this attempt on the life of Ghadaffi. There is a growing global perception that there are  no constraints on the Western powers use of force, and thus no  boundaries of law defining internationally acceptable conduct,  but that of the most effective use of lethal force. Those, as members of humankind and the global family of nations, proceeding along this trajectory of the misuse of power are willfully  undermining much of the foundations that led to the establishment of international laws and a schema for civilized conduct, following upon an architecture designed as direct consequences of World War 11.  An  ironic inversion does exist of literally turning Article 1 of the UN Charter upside down:-

The purpose of the United Nations is stated by Article 1 to be: "to maintain international peace and security, and to that end, to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace."

Thus, when the peacekeepers are openly seen by large swaths of humanity to be warmongers, then  which "terrorist" would henceforth not latch on to the idea of having struck a blow for peace by having launched an effective lethal attack on a leader  of Britain or France as "measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace," – or the leader of the US as the "greater purveyor of violence in the world" ( as Martin Luther King termed his nation)? The undermining of the law does indeed lead us to the debasing of any legal of  moral authority based on perceived credible conduct and  de facto the debasing of any legal or  moral authority based on perceived credible conduct and  de facto and de jure superiority of action.

If not due process and the standards of international law seeking to be upheld – at the very least common sense suggests that bad precedent cannot provide the world with good standards to be abided by for internationally acceptable  legal conduct.