Maybe the next time Pres. Barack Obama is tempted to follow the leadership of the Arab League, he’ll think twice. Having brandished the Arab League’s call as the classiest of multilateral credentials for going to war in Libya, and praised its members as partners, Obama is now left with little more from this crew than promises and the on-again off-again hectoring of Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa.
To be sure, there are good arguments for intervening in Libya. As leader of the free world, the U.S. is called upon by its own decency and democratic values to act when longtime tyrant Moammar Qaddafi embarks on the wholesale slaughter of Libyans trying desperately to overthrow him. If this war ends up spelling the long-overdue end of Qaddafi’s 42-year reign of terror, it could send an important message to other tyrannies, not least Iran’s, that it is becoming more dangerous to deal with massive protest by murdering protesters. The big question, then, is what might follow.
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That’s exactly why the 22-member Arab League, far from being one of the best regional fixers in this effort, is one the worst. The League of Arab States — to use its official name — is not a club of democratic reformers hoping to bring civil liberties to Libya. It is a fractious collection of 21 Arab governments plus the Palestinian Authority, which it has already dubbed a state. Among its members, along with such relatively moderate Islamic countries as Morocco, are some of the world’s most unregenerately despotic, anti-Semitic, terror-breeding or terror-supporting regimes. These include Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and — although the League on Feb. 22 suspended its participation — Libya itself.
Not only has Qaddafi’s Libya been a member, but last March the Arab League handed Qaddafi its annually rotating presidency when he hosted a summit of the League in Sirte, Libya. That summit was not devoted to discussing the need for democratic reform in the Arab world; its focus was the usual routine of blaming Israel for Arab troubles. Other murderous despots holding the Arab League presidency and hosting its summits in recent years have been Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, in 2006, and Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, in 2008.
But to a U.S. administration that values multilateralism above all — the more the better — none of this detracted from the Arab League’s allure as an arbiter, guide, and partner for policy toward Libya. For more than three weeks, as Qaddafi’s forces turned Libya’s uprising into a bloody rout, Obama dithered. Then, on March 12, the Arab League called for a no-fly zone over Libya. Hailing the wishes of the Arab League, though not bothering to seek a resolution from the U.S. Congress, the administration finally swung into action. Five days later, on March 17, the United Nations Security Council, with the enthusiastic vote of the U.S., approved Resolution 1973, authorizing the use of force to protect Libyan civilians.
This murky resolution is a masterpiece of dangerous U.N. equivocation, and the Arab League’s fingerprints are all over it. What Libya actually needs is not a no-fly zone, but a no-Qaddafi zone. Resolution 1973 does not provide for that. Drafted with more concern for Arab League sensitivities than for the practicalities of dealing with Qaddafi and his ruinous reign over Libya, it rules out any foreign boots on the ground and limits the use of force to protecting civilians — a job likely to become increasingly risky, costly, and complex if Qaddafi endures and the conflict drags on.
"But the question the U.S. administration needs to answer is: Why care what the Arab League wants? Why should the world’s leading democratic powers be looking with such deference to this double-dealing, outdated, and despot-riddled outfit?"
Easy: Until the Arab world advances from the 9th to the 21st Century, the rest of the world is wise to treat the Arab League with respect it doesn't deserve and thereby defuse some of the irrational anger and envy that suffuses Arab political thought.
@MikeB
Oh Mike, that is not even close to how the real world works. To pay them respect they don't deserve rewards their 9th century thinking and behaving. The more reality-based answer is that Obama despises our country and its power. What better way to humiliate the arrogant Americans who think they can bomb, invade, nation-build as they please, than to defer to a group of mutually admiring sociopaths who would no more surrender their own power than follow their religion's prohibition of killing other Muslims.
Again, I find your reasoning incomplete. To argue that the only motivation our government would have in defying the Arab League is anger and envy, appears to not consider any number of other more likely motivations; for example, we don't want to give the League the impression their opinions really matter because to do so would limit our options in terms of responding to future events (the pragmatic motivation). Or, and this is my personal favorite, I trust the moral compass of most of our political leaders more than the moral compass of the Arab League...therefore, our motivation is we know more about right and wrong. Let's call that the moral superiority motivation.
Unfortunately, I had to keep checking if Ms. Rosett was speaking of the Arab League or the UN.
6 of one I suppose, as the President subserviates our Nation to all comers.
"Until the Arab world advances from the 9th to the 21st Century, the rest of the world is wise to treat the Arab League with respect it doesn't deserve"
They spit in our face even when we do treat them with the respect they don't deserve as evidenced by this situation.
"Or are we just angry and envious too?"
Envy what? I don't see anything the arab world has thats worth being envious of.
I don't think that any action or inaction by the western world (especially the US) is ever going to be accepted by the arabs. To them nothing we ever do is right and they think that way for a reason. Jealousy.
Ms. Rosett -- I must beg to differ with you. There are no good arguments for the US intervention in Libya. That is especially so when the results may turn out to redound to the US's detriment. Please see Mr. Andrew McCarthy's many columns at this site for why we should not have intervened. As for the Arab League - they should have been told in no uncertain - you have nice, new shiny airplanes from America; you enforce the no-fly zone to your liking.
Gordon, be a little creative. You can't annihilate 500 million Arabs and you can't knock their brains into submission. North Korea and Somalia are completely different from the Arab world and from each other.
It's easy to be simplistic and absolutist. Yes we are right. Yes they are wrong. That's a given. Now what?
"Mekkeby, let's be the parent here. That's my point."
Does the parent let the child dictate what happens? When the child is defiant and spits in the parents face is the parent supposed to laugh and say its all right we'll have cake and ice-cream for dinner after all?
Continue to let them walk all over us and we'll get what we deserve. These people obviously are unable to manage themselves as has been documented by the history of thousands of years of strife and minuscule progress in the middle east. Either we get in there and reform them or we stay out but we shouldn't be letting these dolts tell us what to do and when to do it.
@MikeB
I know you won't engage me, but that doesn't prevent me from doing so. What exactly does it mean when you want "us" (who is that exactly) to be the "parent"? Is your foreign policy position as nuanced as Obama's? I remember asking you in another thread to explain what your position was and you never did. So, I'll ask again, what is your position on this issue? What does being a "parent" mean in this foreign policy context?
The Arab League has only one interest - to keep Libyan oil off the market for months or even years. A protracted civil war will do this nicely. High prices = mo' money for the Arab League.
