As Dr. K. points out – Obama wages a military campaign as if it were drawn up in the faculty lounge of Harvard University. We do not even call it a war, it is a kinetic military action in which we do not even seek to overthrow Gaddafi but instead are trying to get the lunatic to be “more reasonable”.
by Charles Krauthammer
President Obama is proud of how he put together the Libyan operation. A model of international cooperation. All the necessary paperwork. Arab League backing. A Security Council resolution. (Everything but a resolution from the Congress of the United States, a minor inconvenience for a citizen of the world.) It’s war as designed by an Ivy League professor.
True, it took three weeks to put this together, during which time Moammar Gaddafi went from besieged, delusional (remember those youthful protesters on “hallucinogenic pills”) thug losing support by the hour — to resurgent tyrant who marshaled his forces, marched them to the gates of Benghazi and had the U.S. director of national intelligence predicting that “the regime will prevail.”
But what is military initiative and opportunity compared with paper? Well, let’s see how that paper multilateralism is doing. The Arab League is already reversing itself, criticizing the use of force it had just authorized. Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, is shocked — shocked! — to find that people are being killed by allied airstrikes. This reaction was dubbed mystifying by one commentator, apparently born yesterday and thus unaware that the Arab League has forever been a collection of cynical, warring, unreliable dictatorships of ever-shifting loyalties. A British soccer mob has more unity and moral purpose. Yet Obama deemed it a great diplomatic success that the League deigned to permit others to fight and die to save fellow Arabs for whom 19 of 21 Arab states have yet to lift a finger. And what about that brilliant U.N. resolution?
- Russia’s Vladimir Putin is already calling the Libya operation a medieval crusade.
- China is calling for a cease-fire in place — which would completely undermine the allied effort by leaving Gaddafi in power, his people at his mercy and the country partitioned and condemned to ongoing civil war.
- Brazil joined China in that call for a cease-fire. This just hours after Obama ended his fawning two-day Brazil visit. Another triumph of presidential personal diplomacy.
And how about NATO? Let’s see. As of this writing, Britain wanted the operation to be led by NATO. France adamantly disagreed, citing Arab sensibilities. Germany wanted no part of anything, going so far as to pull four of its ships from NATO command in the Mediterranean. France and Germany walked out of a NATO meeting on Monday, while Norway had planes in Crete ready to go but refused to let them fly until it had some idea who the hell is running the operation. And Turkey, whose prime minister four months ago proudly accepted the Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights, has been particularly resistant to the Libya operation from the beginning.
And as for the United States, who knows what American policy is. Administration officials insist we are not trying to bring down Gaddafi, even as the president insists that he must go. Although on Tuesday Obama did add “unless he changes his approach.” Approach, mind you. In any case, for Obama, military objectives take a back seat to diplomatic appearances. The president is obsessed with pretending that we are not running the operation — a dismaying expression of Obama’s view that his country is so tainted by its various sins that it lacks the moral legitimacy to … what? Save Third World people from massacre? Obama seems equally obsessed with handing off the lead role.
[….]
Read the rest – The professor’s war
Nile Gardiner states what is increasingly obvious, that Barack Obama is the weakest United States commander-in-chief ever ( I used to think that LBJ was the worst war president, and James K. Polk the best one we ever had). I know there are Jimmy Carter “fans” who would contest Obama’s title ! How I wish that Ronald Reagan were at the helm (or even Margaret Thatcher!).
by Nile Gardiner
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll released today reveals a striking lack of public confidence in President Obama’s ability as Commander-in-Chief, with just 17 percent of Americans describing his leadership as “strong and decisive”, compared to 36 percent who believe it is “indecisive and dithering”. This should come as no surprise as the Obama administration floundered for several weeks before even committing to international efforts to rein in Colonel Gaddafi.
As NATO prepares to take over command of the no-fly zone in Libya, there remains a great deal of confusion in Washington as to exactly what the US role will be, and what kind of endgame is envisaged by the White House. While the US military has been extensively involved in missile strikes against Libyan targets, the lead role in the campaign on the world stage has been taken on by Great Britain and France, with President Obama playing a distinctly back seat role.
The president has come under heavy fire from both sides of the political aisle in Washington for failing to assert strong US leadership, and hesitating to outline a clear strategy moving forward on Libya. His administration seems almost paralysed in terms of decision-making, and has barely consulted the US Congress. In sharp contrast, British Prime Minister David Cameron has made a direct appeal to Parliament, outlining the reasons why Britain is intervening in Libya, and why he is putting the British armed forces in harms way.
[…]
Whatever the role of NATO in the Libyan mission, US leadership remains vital, both within the alliance and as part of any coalition of the willing. At this time, President Obama appears to have gone AWOL, leaving his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to outline the latest US position. America is now engaged in military operations in North Africa, but led by a president who increasingly makes Jimmy Carter look like General Patton. This is not a moment for weakness and vacillation but a time for American assertiveness and self-confidence in the face of a monstrous tyrant who has brutalised his own people for decades and murdered hundreds of Americans.
Read the rest – Is President Obama the weakest commander-in-chief in US history?
Tags: Charles Krauthammer, Nile Gardiner
