Rizzo on NATO and Libya

Mario Rizzo has an excellent commentary on the overall U.S. adventure into Libya and, also makes this important observation about NATO mission creep:

The mission of NATO has changed from the days when the NATO Treaty was ratified by the US Senate. Even a cursory reading of the treaty and of the debate at the time will tell us that it was about joining forces to prevent an armed attack on the member nations, almost exclusively by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union no longer exists. More importantly, no NATO nation was in danger of armed attack by Libya. We also have it on Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s authority that the situation in Libya is not one in the “vital national interest.” Therefore, it seems to me that stripped of mumbo-jumbo there is no legal basis for the US engaging in a “humanitarian” bombing with NATO forces. (I should also add that it seems reasonable that with the change in mission a new NATO Treaty should have been submitted to the Senate for ratification. I fully understand how inconvenient for American foreign policy this would be. But should law follow convenience needs of a certain policy?)