Marc Thiessen thinks U.S. should nab WikiLeaks editor like we did Noriega. Ready to invade Sweden?

-- by Dave

You know that Republican obsession with "American exceptionalism"? It's becoming pretty obvious, in all the right-wing wailing and teeth-gnashing over the WikiLeaks releases, that for most of these dangerous fools, this translates into a belief that the USA runs the world, and therefore can willy-nilly shove ourselves by force -- militarily or otherwise -- onto other countries without their permission or cooperation.

After all, the leading prospect for the Republican presidential nomination just announced that she thinks we should just go hunt down (and presumably kill) WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Glenn Beck thought we should try him for treason -- which is kind of hard to do with a non-citizen. Then there was WaPo columnist Marc Thiessen last night on Sean Hannity's Fox News show:

THIESSEN: There are plenty of tools at our disposal. … But failing that, we can act unilaterally. We can go and get him without another country’s permission. We did it with General Noriega — there’s authority within the Office of Legal Counsel and that we can go and take anybody anywhere in the world.

As

Alec Seitz-Wald at ThinkProgress observes, this would pretty much mean invading one of the countries where Asange lives part-time, most likely Sweden or Iceland or Australia.

It’s worth noting that going and getting Gen. Manuel Noriega, the former narco-dictator of Panama, as Thiessen suggested, involved a full-scale invasion of the country with 25,000 American troops. Former President George H.W. Bush “broke both international law and [U.S.] government policies” in ordering the invasion in 1989, which resulted in the loss of 23 American servicemembers and the wounding of another 325, the death of hundreds of Panamanians, and major lasting damage to Panama’s economy and capital city.

Yeah, that's American exceptionalism at work.


[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]