Despite claims by NATO’s military command, and President Obama himself, that killing Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is not part of their military objective in Libya, they have set about to do just that. On April 30th, in what appears to be its most blatant attempt yet to assassinate Qaddafi through air strikes on targets where NATO commanders think he may be working or residing, NATO missed getting Qaddafi and his wife but reportedly killed one of Qaddafi’s sons and three grandchildren who were with Qaddafi at the time. All the slain grandchildren were said to be younger than twelve. The slain son happened to be the black sheep of the family, who had played very little part in the current fighting

Another NATO strike on April 30th badly damaged a non-military, non-governmental building housing the Libyan Down’s Syndrome Society. A parent of a girl born with Down’s Syndrome, who set up the school seventeen years ago, said “I felt sad really. I kept thinking, what are we going to do with these children?”

NATO is clearly willing to risk the lives of little children and to risk destroying civilian buildings, including schools, as part of its unauthorized campaign to take out Qaddafi. Nevertheless, the NATO mission’s operational commander, Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, continues to maintain the fiction that NATO is only going after clear military targets.

“All NATO’s targets are military in nature,” Bouchard said, “and have been clearly linked to the Qaddafi regime’s systematic attacks on the Libyan population and populated areas. We do not target individuals.”

Such denials of the obvious parrot the official U.S. position, which distinguishes between the political goal of seeing Qaddafi go and the more limited “humanitarian” goal of protecting Libya’s civilians from Qaddafi’s forces. However, not everyone in the international coalition is willing to be so coy about the real objective. British Defense Secretary Liam Fox, for example, has said that Qaddafi is a “legitimate target.”

When the United Nations Security Council approved the use of military force in Libya on March 17, 2011, it authorized member states, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, to “take all necessary measures” to protect civilians under threat of attack in the country. Supporters of Security Council Resolution 1973, including the United States, stressed that the military objective was solely to protect civilians from further harm. There is no authorization to use military force in order to bring about regime change through assassination of its leader or otherwise. Foreign occupation of Libya in any shape or form is expressly prohibited.

Initially NATO, led by U.S. air power, adhered to the limits set by the UN resolution. It intervened just in time to prevent an impending massacre of civilians in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. It established a no-fly zone and attacked Qaddafi’s ground troops and weaponry to further protect civilians from harm.

However, when the Libyan regime did not immediately collapse and the rebel forces proved incapable of mounting a serious challenge without substantial assistance from the international coalition, NATO upped the ante. It made a deliberate decision to take the side of the rebels in what amounts to a civil war. It is also waging its campaign against the Qaddafi regime in Libya’s most densely populated areas including the capital of Tripoli, with inevitable civilian casualties from NATO attacks added to the mounting civilian casualties caused by loyalist and rebel forces. Even in the rebel strongholds of eastern Libya, NATO has admitted to killing civilians in an airstrike.

Supporters of NATO’s aggressive campaign against Qaddafi argue that the only way to make sure that civilians are protected is to get rid of the dictator who is harming them. However, this argument is fallacious for both pragmatic and legal reasons.

As mentioned above, the Security Council acted to prevent an imminent massacre of civilians in Benghazi and elsewhere in the country, but did not authorize open-ended attacks against Qaddafi himself or against his family. The operative wording of the Security Council authorization to member states was to “take all necessary measures…to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.”

Assassinating Qaddafi ( just like was the case after Saddam Hussein was captured) would not put an end to civilian deaths. Far from constituting a “necessary measure” to protect civilians, killing Qaddafi could well have the opposite unintended consequence by unleashing more violent tribal war between Qaddafi loyalists and opposing tribes, with civilians caught in the middle. Moreover, even if the rebels succeed in taking power (whomever they really are), how do we know that they would not turn with vengeance on civilians they consider supporters of Qaddafi?

Moreover, assassinating a nation’s leader engaged in a civil war who did not launch any hostilities first against another country - however vile the international community may consider that leader to be - is of doubtful validity under international law. Article 23b of the Annex to the Hague Convention of 1907 states, “It is especially forbidden to kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army.” The term “treacherously” as used in this context has been interpreted to refer to political assassinations. And, let’s not forget, NATO is attempting to assassinate the leader of a nation that for the last several years has been non-hostile to its members.

The United Nations Charter allows nations to defend themselves by all means necessary from attack, but also states that “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.” Qaddafi’s regime had not attacked any other nation, nor threatened such an attack, when the Security Council passed its resolution authorizing military action against the regime.

Furthermore, under United States law, assassination is currently rendered illegal by Executive Order 12333. Nor is there any congressional authorization for President Obama to remain engaged in hostilities in Libya, much less to provide any support, through NATO or otherwise, for forcibly removing Qaddafi from power.

In authorizing the military action in Libya, involving outside intervention in an internal conflict, the architects of Security Council Resolution 1973 relied on a developing concept under international law known as the “responsibility to protect” civilians. At a 2005 gathering of world leaders in New York for the High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly (World Summit), heads of state and government reached consensus on the responsibility to protect civilian populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. If a member state fails to protect its own civilian populations or is in fact the perpetrator of such crimes, the international community is supposed to take stronger measures, including the collective use of force through the UN Security Council to provide protection if necessary.

Sadly, as its reported killing of three little children (whose only ‘crime’ was having Qaddafi as their grandfather) demonstrates, NATO is no longer fulfilling its responsibility to protect innocent people from even its own bombs.