What Are We Doing in Libya?
We intervened in Libya to avoid a humanitarian disaster citing both UN sanction and the authorization of the Arab League, but then strange things have happened. Here are some of them:
a) We undermined both organizations when we expanded the war from a no-fly-zone to an open ended attack on Qaddafi's ground assets—even as we usually denied just that and as both organizations were reluctant to spell out such methods;
b) We have never stated the mission, sometimes talking about saving the rebels, at others of removing Qaddafi; to this day, no one either in Libya or Washington can distinguish our official from de facto policy;
c) Using the cover of the UN came at the expense of undermining the U.S. Congress; in the past, presidents who wanted to use force abroad have gone to the UN and Congress, or gone to Congress without the UN, or gone to neither. Never have we gone both to the UN and the Arab League, but not to Congress;
d) It is not just that we do not know who or what the rebels are beyond their appearances on CNN, Fox, and the BBC; we do not know what their agenda would be if they won with our help;
e) Qaddafi is a monster, but one with a propensity the last four years to woo Western intellectuals and academics (with honoraria) in the hopes his son Saif would be able to put a Western face on his tyranny; are we now bombing the very country we used to praise for being in rehab?
f) We have no typology of Middle East unrest, and can't distinguish why meddling in Iran is not good and meddling in Egypt is very good; and so we have no blueprint for interventions: 'no' to humanitarian crises in the Ivory Coast, 'yes' to Libya? 'No' to helping oust an Assad, but 'yes' to Qaddafi. Privately we know an inattentive Obama does have a logic: wait until a resistance movement seems 48 hours from success and then piggy-back on its momentum. But such opportunism is hardly a policy that can be articulated and sometimes it backfires, as in the sputtering rebel movement that went from a sure thing to a long shot in 72 hours.
g) Some readers may cite an earlier preemptive U.S. war against a nation state that we suddenly and unilaterally abandoned without success—such as is the present case with Libya. I cannot other than perhaps a few early punitive raids into Mexico aimed at bandits but not the state. If you are going to take Vienna, take Vienna.
h) Obama has at least brought clarity to the past criticisms during 2001-9 and future rules of public protest: if you are going to attack an oil-producing, Muslim Arab country in the Middle East that poses no threat to U.S. security, without either public support or Congressional authorization, and wish to avoid anti-war opposition, then do so as a liberal president.
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Comments :
Jun '10
Re: What Are We Doing in Libya?
I think Obama should just declare "500,000 innocent Libyan lives saved" and call it a day. It's much cheaper to rewrite history than to make it.
Jul '10
Re: What Are We Doing in Libya?
On point h, the anti-war opposition is showing up in the polling if not in the streets yet. Obama needed a bump prior to announcing his candidacy and decided that if a war worked for the Bushes, go for it. Now he has a dimple instead of a bump and is changing position daily until he finds his bump.
At this point, Libya looks like just one more way for Obama to squander federal dollars in defiance of the House and the American tax payer.
Sep '10
Re: What Are We Doing in Libya?
To steal another quote I heard on Ricochet.
Reconciling the liberal stance on Libya with that on Iraq is like the "Superbowl of Cognitive Dissonance."
Game on.
May '10
Re: What Are We Doing in Libya?
There has been no rally effect because there is nothing around which to rally. He declared war and left the room. I guess he thought it was a witty exit line.
He was absent for his own campaign, though that often happens with tarnished brands. He was absent for the Stimulus, though his presence wouldn't have resulted in any more discipline or effectiveness. He was absent for the drafting of Obamacare, and will hopefully be absent for its dismantling.
Being absent for a war just seems like a whole new level of irresponsibility.
Dec '10
Re: What Are We Doing in Libya?
Aside from the issues of whether or not we should have gotten directly involved in the fighting at all and how it was done, this is, in a nutshell, the essential problem with our increasingly problematic Libyan policy.
The policy should have been to either stay out of the fighting or do all that is required to achieve the final objective as quickly as possible. Instead we are halfheartedly engaged in the fighting and our policy makers cannot bring themselves to do what is required to achieve the stated goal -- removing Gaddafi -- as quickly as possible.
This is ironic since this dithering, uncertain, hesitant, and increasingly "incremental" policy has been adopted by the same sort of people who have reflexively screamed "another Vietnam!" about almost every military action we have taken in the last 20+ years.
We became engaged in and got sucked into the Vietnam war by pursuing a policy of incremental escalation and self-imposed restraint in an effort to achieve a goal that could not be attained that way. At the moment it appears we embarking on a similar path in Libya.
Jan '11
Re: What Are We Doing in Libya?
I must declare myself as one of Dr Hanson's greatest fans, although that makes me part of a large cohort. (You can boost the price of subscription concomitant with increased VDH content and I will gladly open my wallet!)
It may be interesting to have a follow-up debate between Dr Hanson and Ms Huffington - further to September 14th, 2005, about War and Empire (Imperialism). That particular interchange illustrated to me the strengths of Dr Hanson's theses (coming from "the right"), versus the weaknesses of Ms Huffington's arguments (coming from "the left") - whereby the former stands on principles and larger ideas, whereas the latter focuses on quite specific examples whilst ignoring the bigger picture.
I found it quite interesting and reflective of the current Libya debate.
May '10
Re: What Are We Doing in Libya?
What are we doing in Libya? I dunno, conducting a laboratory experiment in the relinquishment of out national sovereignty to some kind of global governance regime, maybe?
Nov '10
Re: What Are We Doing in Libya?
I simply don't believe the Libya intervention was ever solely or even primarily a "humanitarian" intervention. The fact that Europe took the initiative argues against the notion --when do they ever do that? Does it make any sense, then, to ignore matters of direct European self interest, e.g. the flow of oil and of refugees?
Dec '10
Re: What Are We Doing in Libya?
I think the declaration they like to use is "saved or created".
Jun '10
Re: What Are We Doing in Libya?
Kennedy Smith ...
Being absent for a war just seems like a whole new level of irresponsibility.
The whole new level you speak of is just the natural maturation of the man with no fingerprints or legend. Being absent is Obama's specialty. It's interesting that he did this before by voting "Present".
He was absent on the those rare days when Jeremiah Wright was being anti-American, too. Since they were so rare it's understandable that the chances were low for him ever to have known Wright's politics.
Dec '10
Re: What Are We Doing in Libya?
Deeds, not words.
Our historic first Islamic apostate president conforms to the predictions from two years past: When backed into a corner—like a trapped rat—his “mellifluous” (VDH) obfuscations will pass like the rancid fumes his life has always floated on.
Sep '10
Re: What Are We Doing in Libya?
I find the story of boming the rebels by mistake interesting because it is merely the tip of the iceberg on what will go wrong on this thing. And BTW how does bombing any tank or military vehicle that can be targeted (Qadaffi's or otherwise) comport with the mandate of protecting civilians?
One last thing, what intelligence did the US have that made us believe that a humanitarian catastrophe was going to happen in eastern Libya? I don't think the case has been made for what we know and when, I suspect we knew little or nothing other than what was reported in the papers.