In his speech on Libya Monday evening, President Barack
Obama demonstrated why self-congratulation is an awful basis for
foreign policy. The stated aim of the address was to tell the
American people “what we’ve done [in Libya], what we plan to do,
and why this matters to us.” That might have been a genuinely
interesting bit of oratory. It is not what we actually
heard.
Perhaps the wrong speech got loaded onto his teleprompter,
because the preachment Obama delivered fudged the past, gave us
weasel words in place of real goals, and substituted a vigorous
Nobel Peace Prize-winning pat on the back for any good reason to
make this our fight. The evasions of fact and friction were so
breathtaking that they need to be cataloged for posterity. What I
offer here is only a first and flawed attempt:
1. What national interest? Obama said
that when Americans’ “interests and values are at stake, we have a
responsibility to act.” These are two very different things. If
America got into it with other nations every time they offended our
values, we would need a much bigger military. (Maybe we could
borrow China’s?)
By putting interests and values together, Obama tried to
pull a switcheroo. He said that if he had “waited one more day” to
act, a massacre might have occurred in the city of Benghazi, which
might have “stained the conscience of the world.” He explained, “It
was not in our national interest to let that happen.” More to the
point, “I refused to let that happen.”
2. What Constitution? The “one more day”
line helped to set up Obama’s justification for not seeking a
congressional resolution for US actions in Libya. The
administration has maintained, impossibly, that maintaining a
no-fly zone is not an act of war, which only Congress has the power
to declare.
Whatever you think of George W. Bush’s wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq — I wholeheartedly approved of Afghanistan and was as
indecisive as Hamlet about Iraq — at least he went to Congress,
twice, and got them to formally authorize hostilities. Obama
assures us that he launched American war planes into Libya only
“after consulting the bipartisan leadership of Congress,” but why
not at least hold a quick vote, or promise to hold one at the first
possible opportunity?
3. What dithering? Obama last night
painted himself as a decisive leader, but that is far from the
truth. In fact, he dithered. He issued ultimata to Libyan strongman
Moammar Gaddafi. He waffled on whether the U.S. would support a
no-fly zone or help enforce one if the UN voted for it, and then he
suddenly decided to go all-in. Obama indecision was the main reason
a congressional vote wasn’t called. There was one really good
reason for this that he did his best to paper over in his
speech.
4. What civil war? The thing that started
the conflict, said Obama, was that “Libyans took to the streets to
claim their basic human rights.” They are, in his telling “innocent
people,” “men, women and children who sought their freedom from
fear.” For some Libyans, that is undoubtedly true, and Gaddafi is
nobody’s idea of a good guy, but the situation on the ground was
much more complicated than the one Obama tried to spoonfeed
us.
Libya is an unnatural political creation of three tribes
in one nation, overseen by a strongman. What is happening now looks
less like an uprising and more like a civil war. By enforcing a
no-fly zone, the U.S. is taking sides in that civil war, though
we’re doing so in a manner ill-befitting a superpower.
5. What regime change? Obama’s clear goal
is regime change, but he doesn’t want to call it that. Oh, don’t
misunderstand, he has “embraced the goal” of getting Gaddafi out of
power and will “actively pursue it through non-military means.” In
the meantime, the US and NATO will continue the bomb the crap out
of the ruler’s forces and thus give support to the rebels. But,
ahem, just who are these rebels?
6. What about al Qaeda? This is the point
where it would be very helpful to have a clear idea of what is and
is not in America’s clearly defined national interest, rather than
our vague ideals. How about this one: It is bad for U.S. interests
to enter a conflict on the same side as al Qaeda.
Well, that’s going to be a problem in Libya. Al Qaeda has
for years schemed against the Libyan strongman. Its agents are on
the ground working for his overthrow. Obama brought up al Qaeda
twice in his speech but never once mentioned this troublesome
fact.
Let’s grant that it is possible that al Qaeda’s influence
is being overblown. But shouldn’t our president have spent some
time in his self-congratulatory address explaining to us mere
mortals why his recent actions do not make it more likely that an
al Qaeda-influenced government will rise to power?
