Libya: The Genesis of a Bad Idea

[Geee]

Pajamas Media:

The president spoke Monday night to clarify our intervention in Libya. Instead he made things worse, and could not explain the mission (are we/are we not after Qaddafi?), the methodology to achieve it (are we in a no-fly-zone or are we bombing ground targets essential to save the rebels?), and the desired outcome (who are the “rebels,” what do we wish from them, and are they better than Qaddafi?). Indeed, after almost two weeks, these questions still have not been asked much less answered.

So the omissions pose the question: how did Obama, the archetype war critic, find himself bombing—in optional and preemptive fashion, and without congressional authority — an Arab Muslim oil-exporting country, and one that posed no immediate threat to American national security, despite being governed by a monster who, nevertheless, had been recently courted by Western intellectuals, academics, universities, and diplomats?

Unfortunately, Obama has no principled or strategically logical foreign policy. So it is mostly loud declarations that he is not George Bush and making things up ad hoc as he goes along. Here, I think, is what happened with Libya.

Nearly the entire Middle East (save the bugaboo democracies in Iraq and Israel) erupts three months ago against a potpourri of oligarchy, theocracy, dictatorship, monarchy, and military juntas — the common thread being anger against corrupt, kleptocratic dynasties that have ruined the economies of what should be otherwise rich countries and denied basic freedoms.

Obama is confused and has no typology of these uprisings, except a crude binary. On the one hand, some of the demonstrations are against pro-American strongmen and thus can be channeled into “the hope and change,” “we are the change we’ve been waiting for” left rhetoric. He thus piggy-backed (albeit belatedly as is his “vote-present” style) onto Tunisia and Egypt. We endorsed the reformers only when we knew they were going to win and they seemed to reflect liberal “change” against Cold War-like, American client SOBs.

[Pepper]

Question: So the omissions pose the question: how did Obama, the archetype war critic, find himself bombing—in optional and preemptive fashion, and without congressional authority — an Arab Muslim oil-exporting country, and one that posed no immediate threat to American national security, despite being governed by a monster who, nevertheless, had been recently courted by Western intellectuals, academics, universities, and diplomats?

 

 

 

Because there is an election coming up and he needs to be seen a little tougher than Dukakis so he picks on the weakest of thugs in the Middle East.