GOP's Politiical Shots at Obama's Libya Policy

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright March 27, 2011
All Rights Reserved.                                         

             Taking political shots at the White House’s Libya policy, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) asked for clarification of (a) Libya’s strategic interests and (b) an end game to the U.S. mission.  While there’s nothing wrong with expecting a coherent rationale, there’s a problem with exploiting Libya for political gain.  President Barack Obama finds himself caught between his party’s left wing and conservatives seeking to score political points before next year’s presidential elections.  Barack decided to intervene in Libya March 19 after Col. Moammar Kadafi promised to exterminate his political opponents, marching his army toward the rebel stronghold in Benghazi.  Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pushed hard, together with French Prime Minister Nicholas Sarkozy and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, for a joint NATO mission stop Kadafi and establish a “no-fly zone.”

            Before Barack speaks to the nation tomorrow, Defense Secretary Robert Gates mucked up Obama’s message telling ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopolous that Libya was not vital to U.S. national security.  “It was not a vital national interest to the United States, but it was an interest,” said Gates, fueling Republican criticism that Obama’s intervention was somehow frivolous or unnecessary.  Gates never made that argument while his predecessor, former Bush Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, argued that Iraq was vital to U.S. national security.  Only a week into the mission, House Speaker Boehner and other Republicans, like Sen. Richard Luger (R-Ind.), ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, demand instant results, while, at the same time, cutting former President George W. Bush’s Iraq and Afghanistan wars a free pass.

            When Bush went to war in Iraq March 20, 2003, Saddam Hussein was not embarking on genocide to set down a possible civil war.  While he was known for his poison gas attack on the Kurds March 17, 1988 at Halabja, he was not, like Kadafi, threatening mass murder.  Bush’s attack on Iraq lacked the U.N. support Barack obtained for stopping Kadafi’s advance on Libya’s eastern port cities, especially Benghazi.  In only 7 days, Obama’s Libyan mission reversed Kadafi’s conquests and drove his forces into retreat.  Lugar questioned Obama’s “national interest” joining a U.N.-approved mission to stop Kadafi’s expected massacre.  Lugar had no “national interest” objections to Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It’s certainly in the U.S. national interest to prevent Kadafi from another Pan Am 103-type terrorist attack or genocide on pro-reform protesters.

            Obama’s critics make much of Libyan rebels’ lack of identity, fearing another al-Qaeda incursion into the Middle East.  Some reports from the U.K. have al-Qaeda’s mujahedeen fighting along side Libyan freedom-fighters.  Obama’s GOP critics worry about the U.S. getting bogged down in Libya but express no such objections when it comes to eight-and-ten-year-old wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Kadafi has been the most notorious rogue ruler in the Middle East and North Africa for the last 42 years.  His direct involvement in downing Pan Am 103, killing 270 passengers and crew, was never addressed by the U.S.  Barack’s detractors ask whether Obama has gone after Kadafi or stuck to the U.N. mission of protecting civilians.  Most know that Kadafi’s murderous instincts present a clear and present danger for opponents or any county vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

            Obama’s case against Kadafi involves the 68-year-old terrorist sponsor directly causing incalculable numbers of deaths and injuries.  Questioning the national security significance of Libya fails to ask the right questions about the pros and cons of U.S. military intervention.  “Imagine if we were sitting here and Benhghazi had been overrun, a city of 700,000 people, and tens of thousands of people had been slaughtered, hundreds of thousands had fled, either with nowhere to go or overwhelming Egypt, hi its in its own difficult transition,” said Hillary, making the case for U.S. military intervention.  Hillary brings up the linkage between Libya’s potential border crisis and Egypt’s future recovery after 30 years of Hosni Muarak rule.  Before the GOP presses Obama for immediate results in Libya, they should look long-and-hard at the pass they’ve given Iraq and Afghanistan.

            Obama’s decision to enter the Libyan fray was a measured response to Kadafi’s promise to massacre his civilian population opposing his regime. GOP objections stem more from politics and less from looking at the big picture where Kadafi presented a danger to civilians and the region.  When France and Britain decided to go ahead to stop Kadafi, the U.S. could not refuse to join forces.  If a massacre had taken place, the U.S. would be blamed for not intervening.  U.S. commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan is no excuse to permit genocide wherever it’s possible to intervene.  Clinton made the strongest possible case for why the U.S. could not sit idly by watching Kadafi massacre his own civilian population.  U.S. had a strategic interest in ridding the Middle East and North Africa of a knowm terrorist, who, at the earliest possible time, would have struck again against the U.S.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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