Dr. K. points out the anomaly (and hypocrisy) of the same people who want us to get rid of Khadafy, were the same ones who denounced our getting rid of Saddam Hussein (a far bloodier tyrant). The so called Arabs street in Libya is now actually calling for the return of George W. Bush (you do not hear any one putting much stock in Barack Obama). Although the Iraqi War was badly handled in the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, it is possible that the verdict though still out on the Bush Doctrine, might not be as unfavorable as the liberals think it will be.
by Charles Krauthammer
Voices around the world, from Europe to America to Libya, are calling for U.S. intervention to help bring down Moammar Gaddafi. Yet for bringing down Saddam Hussein, the United States has been denounced variously for aggression, deception, arrogance and imperialism.
A strange moral inversion, considering that Hussein’s evil was an order of magnitude beyond Gaddafi’s. Gaddafi is a capricious killer; Hussein was systematic. Gaddafi was too unstable and crazy to begin to match the Baathist apparatus: a comprehensive national system of terror, torture and mass murder, gassing entire villages to create what author Kanan Makiya called a “Republic of Fear.”
Moreover, that systemized brutality made Hussein immovable in a way that Gaddafi is not. Barely armed Libyans have already seized half the country on their own. Yet in Iraq, there was no chance of putting an end to the regime without the terrible swift sword (it took all of three weeks) of the United States.
No matter the hypocritical double standard. Now that revolutions are sweeping the Middle East and everyone is a convert to George W. Bush’s freedom agenda, it’s not just Iraq that has slid into the memory hole. Also forgotten is the once proudly proclaimed “realism” of Years One and Two of President Obama’s foreign policy – the “smart power” antidote to Bush’s alleged misty-eyed idealism.
[…]
It’s Yemen’s president and the delusional Gaddafi who are railing against American conspiracies to rule and enslave. The demonstrators in the streets of Egypt, Iran and Libya have been straining their eyes for America to help. They are not chanting the antiwar slogans – remember “No blood for oil”? – of the American left. Why would they? America is leaving Iraq having taken no oil, having established no permanent bases, having left behind not a puppet regime but a functioning democracy. This, after Iraq’s purple-fingered exercises in free elections seen on television everywhere set an example for the entire region.
Facebook and Twitter have surely mediated this pan-Arab (and Iranian) reach for dignity and freedom. But the Bush Doctrine set the premise.
Read the rest: From Baghdad to Benghazi
Tags: Charles Krauthammer
