Two Quick Hitters on Foreign Policy

• Gleen Greenwald is always good for exposing the outrages of the pro-torture, pro-invasion establishment.  This post is no exception.  It makes the point that the Libya operation is illegal on many levels, and that President Obama is going further than President Bush did in asserting war-making powers.  I don't see any reasonable argument that this is a legal military operation- it's not.  On top of that, it's bad policy and shouldn't be approved even if proposed legally (of course I think it would be approved if the President tried, or at least would have been at the start of the conflict).  It's just impossible to picture any good outcome in Libya- either Qadafi survives and stays in power and massacres lots of people anyway, meaning we just gave them a brief reprieve; or the rebels win/ we kill Qadafi, in which case he'll be replaced by a regime that will likely be no different.
• I heard Andrew Ross Sorkin on Morning Joe today off-handedly call the President's decision to greenlight the killing of Osama Bin Laden "the most courageous decision of his presidency" on the way to making another point.  Just how can that decision be characterized as courageous?  I'm not criticizing the decision, mind you, and I'm fine with the assassination of Bin Laden, but it seemed like a kind of obvious call and not particularly controversial even.  Courageous decisions are those that carry huge downside risk or are generally unpopular but the "right thing to do" anyway.  In the Bin Laden case, the soldeirs involved were certainly courageous, as the downside risk for them was death, but Obama's call was pretty easy.  I know it's a minor point, but we shouldn't cheapen the concept of courage in politics like that.  For Obama to be courageous he could do something like close Guantanamo in spite of public opposition, or draw tough lines in the sand with Republicans on the Debt Ceiling negotiations (the downside risk being a default by the US government- maybe not the right thing to do, but courageous anyway- sometimes courageous decisions are still stupid).