Koh, Dean of Yale Law School, has been nominated by Obama as Legal Adviser to the State Department. Because he is not completely bonkers, or a crypto-fascist (he's the proverbial "good liberal"), the right-wing slime-and-smear machine has gone into overdrive about his nomination, for example, here and here.
There are various responses and corrections by law professors and commentators here and here and here. It is sad, but telling, that a key part of the defense to the attacks is to claim that Koh never "cheered on" Nicaragua for challenging the U.S. in the International Court of Justice for its terrorist campaign against Nicaragua, and that he never compared the U.S. to Iran and North Korea as serial violators of international law. But why didn't he? In both cases, that would have been the morally and legally correct postion for a responsible intellectual to have advocated. Alas, there is nothing more fatal in politics than someone taking the morally defensible position.
Personally, I'd rather see Richard Falk or Francis Boyle nominated for the job, but that ain't the world we live in. Harold Koh is the best one can expect, even from a plutocratic empire in decline, and he would no doubt do a decent job. Hopefully he'll weather this smear storm.
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