The international legal basis for US airstrikes in Iraq centered around Iraq’s government, such as it is, requesting aid in the war against ISIS. The legal basis for the Syria war is the same.
Syria didn’t request US aid in the war, of course, but Iraq did, and US officials are arguing that’s just as good. The official statement to the UN on the war was that Iraq needed it.
US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power argued that the UN Charter gives the right to use force for “self-defense” without the permission of the nation being struck or the UN Security Council.
The argument, then, is to “self-defense,” but without the self part, and that the US war is self-defense for Iraq, but being carried out by the US, and several nations Iraq doesn’t particularly like to begin with.
How this will hold up in the international court of public opinion remains to be seen, though the practical matter is that with its veto on the Security Council the US can basically launch wars with impunity.
The bigger legal question, rather, is the domestic one, as the war seems to be designed to violate the US War Powers Act. Again, though, the House has put the law on hold to avoid uncomfortable pre-election votes on war.
So the US can bomb in Syria but Russia can't bomb in Ukraine? The US can step on any State when it likes it but no other State can do the same? The US is run by self worshiping jerks, leading us into more wars until the big one.
The answer to your question is yes. When you have a delusional political class, i.e., ruling elite believing that they are truly exceptional, then they can do pretty much anything they want. The National Socialists thought this way to and you know what happened to them.
The comical part is that the US is claiming that Syrian government weakness, and its inability to control its eastern provinces, justifies their attack, when of course it is only US policy and the active support of the Syrian rebels by the US's regional client states that has created and sustained that situation.
As usual, the consequences of intervention are used to justify further intervention, ad infinitum.
"…How this will hold up in the international court of public opinion…"
Firstly, the USG doesn't give a ratsass about public opinion, international or not. They are not afraid of the UN, the ICC, or the peaceniks here in the USA. They are going to do whatever they want regardless of what anyone else thinks.
And the American people should keep reminding themselves (if they admit it in the first place) that when the "fighting over THERE" is no longer "over there" and many innocent Americans perish "over here" it was because of the USG's actions "over there". Rep.Paul said that publicly once and was excoriated for it. Perhaps the message will sink in this time because there will be another incident, it's inevitable.
I think we get it. The US government is always above the law when it pursues violent means. That's why, when the POTUS spoke about torture, the only Americans that were singled out for condemnation and denunciation were those of us who objected. We've become what we used to say we hated, and done so with unmixed enthusiasm, and "patriotic ardor". Which only serves to confirm the old saw about patriotism and scoundrels. We've chosen to be a nation of scoundrels. Aggressors, bombers, torturers.
(1 John 3:4) Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.
Is it so hard to see that lawlessness is sin according to the Judeo-Christian canon? Is it hard to
understand the world will only tolerate America's lawlessness only as it has to– and will have a
broad and deep moral justification for dealing decisively with our criminality?