No doubt you’ve heard President Obama being criticized variously for taking too long to launch military action to aid rebel fighters in Libya and for refusing to target dictator Muammar Gaddafi for assassination. But I thought these criticisms amounted to nothing more than a misguided and irresponsible attempt to goad Obama into war.
This is why I was so dismayed when he fell for it and then made quite a show a week ago today of informing the American people that – in less than 10 days – the U.S. had saved the Libyan people from the genocidal wrath of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. He then assured them that – within 48 hours – U.S. forces would be handing over the reins of the UN mandate under which this U.S. military action was authorized to NATO allies.
I said that America’s role would be limited; that we would not put ground troops into Libya; that we would focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation and that we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners. Tonight, we are fulfilling that pledge.
(Whitehouse.gov, March 28, 2011)
Except that Gaddafi made a mockery of this stamp of mission accomplished by immediately retaking all of the cities the rebels had conquered under cover of the U.S.-led no-fly zone, massacring thousands of the very civilians Obama vowed to protect in the process. In fact, nothing demonstrates how premature and patently ill-advised Obama’s stamp of mission accomplished was quite like the request NATO made yesterday for U.S. forces to resume their leading role in this Libyan misadventure for another 48 hours. Obama obliged, knowing full well that this request is rather like a contractor requesting just a little more time to finish building your house.
Frankly, I would never have thought that Obama, who was elected president primarily because of his sensible opposition to the Iraq war, would emulate the warmongering Bush by getting the U.S. into another messy war … while still trying to extricate it from the two messy wars Bush left behind. And no matter what he says about UN authorization and limited U.S. involvement, the fact is that Bush said the same things to rationalize military action in Iraq.
Even worse, Obama insists that the mission was to prevent a massacre not to kill Gaddafi. But this is rather like Bush saying the mission was to find WMDs not to kill Saddam. But, having failed to find WMDs, at least Bush can claim the collateral benefit of killing Saddam.
By contrast, there’s no evidence whatsoever that Obama prevented a massacre; to the contrary, it is painfully clear that U.S. military action did absolutely nothing to prevent Gaddafi from slaughtering civilians in his desperate fight to hold onto power.
Now the only thing further military action will do is help the rebels win their civil war against Gaddafi. The problem, however, is that it is not at all clear that these rebels will be anymore democratic or friendly towards the U.S. than he was; in fact there’s growing evidence that they are inspired more by Osama bin Laden than George Washington.
This means that the only thing the CIA agents Obama sent in might end up doing is training and arming these rebels to do in Libya what CIA agents trained and armed rebels in Afghanistan to do during the 1980s, namely, to turn the country into a Taliban/jihadist paradise….
This is an unmitigated farce. But I knew it would be thus.
For here is how I pooh poohed all of the talk about stopping Gaddafi long before a single U.S. tomahawk missile was launched at Tripoli:
There really is nothing the U.S. or any other country can do to stop the killing—since no country will sacrifice the lives of its soldiers to liberate Libya: it doesn’t have that much oil; and the debacle of Somalia remains an open and inhibiting military wound…
So when you hear blowhard politicians and commentators (aka arm-chair generals) barking orders for the president to ‘get tough with Libya,’ just bear in mind that they are spewing theoretical rubbish.
(Gaddafi vows to fight to the death, The iPINIONS Journal, February 24, 2011)
Here is how I pooh poohed the notion that the no-fly zone the UN authorized would do anything to stop Gaddafi:
The no-fly zone the U.S., France, and the UK enforced over Iraq from 1991-2003 did nothing to prevent Saddam Hussein from exercising dictatorial control. Instead, it took a full-scale invasion (based on trumped-up charges that he not only possessed but was planning to use WMDs) to finally get rid of him. And look how well that turned out….
(No-fly zone over Libya? The iPINIONS Journal, March 16, 2011)
And here is how I pooh poohed the arbitrary and capricious principle behind this military action:
Why not intervene in places like Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iran and, most glaring of all, China where dictators are brutalizing their citizens far worse than what Gaddafi is doing in Libya? Not to mention that black Africans in places like Darfur, Congo, and Zimbabwe must be wondering why the same humanitarian concerns that prompted this international intervention to protect Muslim Africans have not prompted similar action to protect any of them from the genocidal dictators who have brutalized them for decades.
(UN approves no-fly zone, The iPINIONS Journal, March 18, 2011)
Enough said?
NOTE: Obama’s silence in the face of the Rwandan-style genocide now unfolding in the Ivory Coast is deafening.
Related commentaries:
Gaddafi vows to fight to the death
No-fly zone over Libya?
UN approves no-fly zone
Conflict in Ivory coast
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