By bombing Libya, President Obama has accomplished some things once thought absolutely impossible in America:
(a) War-mongering liberals: Liberals are now chest-thumping about military “progress” in Libya. Even liberal television and radio commentators cite ingenious reasons why an optional, preemptive American intervention in an oil-producing Arab country, without prior congressional approval or majority public support — and at a time of soaring deficits — is well worth supporting, in a sort of “my president, right or wrong,” fashion. Apparently, liberal foreign policy is returning to the pre-Vietnam days of the hawkish “best and brightest.”
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(b) Europe first: Many Americans have long complained about the opportunistic, utopian Europeans. Under the protective U.S. defense shield, they often privately urged us to deal with dangerous foreign dictators — while staying above the fray to criticize America, at the same time seeking trade advantages and positive global PR. But now the wily Obama has outwaited even the French. He has managed to shame them into acting, with a new opossum-like U.S. strategy of playing dead until finally the Europeans were exasperated — almost as if the president were warning them, “We don’t mind the Qaddafi bloodletting if you, who are much closer to it, don’t mind.” The British Guardian and French Le Monde will be too knee-deep in the Libyan war, busy chalking up Anglo-French “wins” and worrying about European oil concessions, to charge America with the usual imperialism, colonialism, and militarism. We are almost back to the 1956 world of the Suez crisis.
(c) Iraq was just a prequel to Libya: Conservatives have complained that opposition — especially in the cases of then-senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden — to George W. Bush’s antiterrorism policies and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was more partisan than principled. Obama ended that debate by showing that not only can he embrace — or, on occasion, expand — the Bush-Cheney tribunals, preventive detentions, renditions, Predator attacks, intercepts and wiretaps, and Guantanamo Bay, but he can now preemptively attack an Arab oil-exporting country without fear of Hollywood, congressional cutoffs, MoveOn.org “General Betray Us”–type ads, Cindy Sheehan on the evening news, or Checkpoint-like novels. In short, Obama has ensured that the antiwar movement will never be quite the same.
(d) Monster-in-recovery: The Qaddafi clan has been wooing Westerners through oil money and multicultural gobbledygook. In the last few years, the British released the Lockerbie bomber, a native of Libya; Saif Qaddafi, the would-be artist and scholar and the son of Col. Moammar Qaddafi, essentially bought a Ph.D. from the prestigious London School of Economics; the creepy Harvard-connectedMonitor Group hired out cash-hungry “scholars” to write tributes to Qaddafi’s achievements; and Mariah Carey, 50 Cent, Beyoncé, and other entertainers earned a pile of petrodollars by crooning for the Qaddafis. Then, suddenly, Obama spoiled the fun and profits by turning Qaddafi from a rehabilitated monster back into Ronald Reagan’s old “Mad Dog of the Middle East.”
(e) Stuff happens: Many supporters of the Iraq War condemned Abu Ghraib as the poorly supervised, out-of-control prison it was. Lax American oversight resulted in the sexual humiliation of detained Iraqi insurgents. It was a deplorable episode, in which, nonetheless, no one was killed, and yet it took an enormous toll on the credibility of Bush-administration officials. But while the media were covering the Libyan bombing and the Middle East uprisings, a number of Afghan civilians allegedly were executed by a few rogue American soldiers. That was a far worse transgression than anything that happened at Abu Ghraib during Bush’s tenure — but it was apparently an incident that, in the new media climate, could legitimately be ignored. Obama made “stuff happens” an acceptable defense for those doing their best to run a war from Washington.
(f) War really is tiring: The media serially blamed a supposedly lazy Ronald Reagan for napping during military operations abroad. George W. Bush was criticized for cutting brush at his Texas ranch while soldiers fought and died in Iraq. Obama rendered all such presidential criticism mere nitpicking when he started aerial bombardment in the midst of golfing, handicapping the NCAA basketball tournament, and taking his family to Rio de Janeiro.
(g) The road to Damascus? After Bush’s interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, many war-weary Americans believed that we would never again get involved in a Middle East war. But now, with Obama’s preemptive bombing of Libya, giddy American interventionists are again eyeing Iran, Syria — and beyond!
In short, Obama turned America upside down when he bombed Libya — and in ways we could have scarcely imagined.
"By bombing Libya, President Obama has accomplished some things once thought absolutely impossible in America."
Hey, give the poor guy a break; he's only doing what Rahm Emmanuel said to do, i.e. take advantage of a crisis to do things not previously thought possible.
While it is impossible to argue with anything in this article, anyone want to bet against me when I say this will all be forgotten, and the libtards will revert back to form the next time a Republican president launches an attack, no matter how justified in reality?
Wow!!! I can't believe I didn't see this before you brought your credible opinions to the attention of the intellectual elite! I admit, I've not been tuning into Rush as often as I should. I've actually been dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Recession on my ability to meet by basic living expenses. Here's what the Bush legacy has done for me: External Link
I agree that all these western liberal reversals of opinion are happening, but don't think for a second that this is the new liberal way that conservative politicians will also be treated! It doesn't matter whether a conservative makes a smart move, EVERYTHING is to be belittled and complained about by liberals as long as conservatives are doing it. This is only a rare time now that we see the other side of the same coin, that Obama can do no wrong with military decisions, according to the liberals -- even when he does the exact same things that George Bush did. It is never about the action for liberals, it is always about relentlessly destroying conservative leaders, while forever supporting only liberal politicians.
In just a few short months Obama has turned al Qaedaa and the Muslim Brotherhood into "allies" & allies into autocrats on the way out. I guess that's the outreach to Muslims he promised.
The Obama doctrine is clearly "arm America's enemies and hold America's allies at arms length."
Brilliantly put Dr. Hanson but there are people now calling for impeachment and they are on the far left - the other thing this did was ensure a primary challenge... And the last time a democrat won after a primary challenge was??? Howard Dean, we need you, the GOP I mean...
A searing commentary on the state of liberal political pandering and disgusting main stream media hypocrisy. Likely these 7 paragraphs contain more edification and critical analysis then that received from a four year college education. Thus we are doomed as a nation to ever remain in a dark cloud of pandering hypocrisy with beacons such as Dr. Hanson providing the occasional respite to guide our way. Thank you Sir.
Regardless of one's view on the powers of any president to take us to war, is it too much to ask for at least a non-binding Congressional resolution on Libya?
Or are the Democrats too afraid to be on the record for Hillary's war and are the Republicans too afraid to be on the record against it?
Except for Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Richard Lugar, and Dennis Kucinich and his merry band of Leftists, the total lack of comment and concern on the part of individual representatives and senators on this looming disaster is a disgrace.
Of course it's how you say--and I think Dr. Hanson's column was very much tongue-in-cheek.
While a Democrat president is in office, the vast majority of his base will shrug off :
Adventurist wars, scandals of historic proportions, debts and deficits beyond the mathematical zone known to most Americans (how many zeros go in a trillion?), "man-caused disasters," abuses by US forces, a clinically-insane VP, drones, renditions and Guantanamo, endless gaffes, constitutional violations of all sorts, a bad economy, serial vacationing, a potentially illegal presidency, legislation that nobody wants, high gas prices, betrayed allies, a cabinet made out of unaccountable thugs and mesomorphic marms with mullets, fawned-over enemies, an impoverished America, lawsuits against upstanding governors, and a struggling middle class. I probably left something out.
While we all know that as soon as a Republican is in the White House, a quirky way to pronounce "nookilar" will make above-the-fold headlines.
I said "the vast majority" of the Dem base, because, although still wrong on all counts, there is a small principled percentage of them that actually stick to their ideals with some sort of consistency (Naderists come to mind).
For all the others, the only consistency is hatred of Republicans.
Why are we spending so much time on middle eastern issues? Because of oil period. The solution: Electric cars. Big oil does not control the electric industry and when (very soon) the battery technolgy becomes feasible we will quickly change over, effectively ending their grip on the American Public. We should be spending billions of dollars on batteries not on middle-eastern countries.
Good column. Wherever your tongue was, you nailed it. I watched the McLaughlin report yesterday and became angrier than I've been in a while. Eleanor Clift, who is actually very tough to look at, referred lovingly to this Libya war as something like a "Humanitarian intervention." Have we declined to a point where when people are bombed or shot and often die as a result, it cannot be called a war?
And while it is certainly not as great a carrier of the heebie-jeebies as Ms. Clift and such, I am not thrilled when Republicans essentially say two wars are okay, but this is one too many.
Give me an out and out peacenik or Gen Jack D. Ripper over these pusillanimous stump jumpers.
I like the points mentioned in this article. I have a couple of questions though. How do the unprecedented social uprising throughout the Middle East factor into your rancorous Republican blathering? If the use of military force to target and kill one's own civilians isn't a justification for the world to act, then what is? WMD? Now that you have expressed your appreciation for some of Obama's achievements I take it you will be voting for him in 2012?
Presuming the answer to the last question is NO, then I just wanted to say GOOD LUCK IN 2012 MY FRIENDS!
Great article, however, I'm a little disappointed that you couldn't find the space to compare this escapade to Greek history. Specifically, I refer to the Iliad, where all-powerful beings oversee a battle between two fueding armies, picking and choosing at random when to interfere in the flow of events. Our policy is anti-Qaddafi, yet not really pro-rebel, so we form a square around the combatants so they can slowly kill one another. We're in this conflict to prevent a massacre, yet remain aloof enough to allow the parties to continue to battle, as long as neither side gets too out-of-hand. How is this a foreign policy?
Dr. VDH - very good. What is happening now reminds me of those who say: Do as I say (not as I do).
Senator Obama criticized President Bush for going to war, and now President Obama has gone to war. Senator Obama said that anytime the country goes to war it needs to have Congressional approval. President Obama has now gone to war without Congressional approval.
Shouldn't President Obama do what Senator Obama said to do?
Here's another possible amazing achievement.
Qadaffy holds on, and since Obama alienated the Congress by not going to it to get support for his preliminary incursion he cant' get support from it for the necessary military escalation that he needs to assure that Qadaffy "must go." NATO decides not to commit ground troops to the operation on its own. The Arab League, of course, is long gone. The UN? Please. In the end, Qadaffy holds on to power and can brag that he "defeated" the great United States of America, further eroding our status as the last remaining superpower.
Amazing!
The cosmic joke is that Obama is giving the neocons exactly what they want: to absolutely destabilize the Middle East by extending the scope of American invasions. The current aerial strategy in Libya will fail militarily, entailing an embarrassing "loss of American credibility", to be salvaged only by a ground invasion; civilian deaths will result. After enough uproar, the "Arab street" will stage uprisings against their rulers, and there will be further opportunities for "humanitarian interventions". Ultimately every regime will topple, to be replaced by militant Islamists. Is Obama stupid, or is he truly Machiavellian?
