Ross Douthat goes point-by-point through my criticisms of his column. Ross insists that “the Bush-Cheney vision of America’s role in the world” endures “in good ways and bad, deep into a presidency that promised to repudiate it”:
[W]here the Libyan war is concerned the Obama White House has displayed both continuities and discontinuities with Bush-era interventionism. On the one hand, our North African campaign has been justified by the same broad worldview and the same kind of arguments that gave us the Iraq invasion. On the other hand, it’s implementation has owed more to Clintonian liberal internationalism than to the neoconservative foreign policy vision. On the other other hand, if you look at military commitments rather than U.N. resolutions, the Libyan campaign is arguably less multilateral than the war in Iraq — and it’s a more striking manifestation of the imperial presidency, in a sense, because we’re fighting it with barely a nod to the need for congressional approval.
Ross’s Libya points are well-taken, especially on the imperial presidency, where we couldn’t agree more. On multilateralism, I would argue that merely counting the number of allies in any mission is not as salient as which allies. If the Arab League had backed the Iraq war, along with France, Russia and China, I could see Ross’s point. He’s also right to see military continuities from 2006 – 2011. But what we understand as the core dynamic of the Bush-Cheney approach was from 2001 – 2006. Those were the years when the deepest holes were dug.
The other important point is that Obama inherited these wars and their apparatus (including the torture bureaucracy). You cannot practically abolish an entire government machine built up over two terms overnight. If Obama puts the torture era behind us, gets us out of Iraq and accelerates the departure from Afghanistan (via a temporary build-up), then I think we will see starker differences than Ross does.
As for the impact of Obama on the Iranian revolution and the Arab Spring, I agree it’s too facile to draw a direct linkage. History and perspective will again help. But the Cairo speech – defending democracy in the heart of the Arab world – was a breakthrough. Bush could never have done it.
The closest he could get was London. But the Obama campaign’s leverage of social media and the call for change was echoed in Tehran and then in Cairo. The fact that a man with Hussein as a middle name killed bin Laden is also pivotal for shifting the propaganda war in our favor.
Yes, the potential for Obama in re-branding the US was partly foiled by the pro-Israel lobby. And that remains the acid test for many Arabs and Muslims. But his election and possible re-election will undoubtedly affect the promise of reform in the region in part because America has finally had the good sense to get out of the way and to speak more quietly and subtly. A return to the crude rhetoric of a Bolton or Romney would help no one.
Yes, the Libya adventure is the drastic exception that proves the rule. Like Ross, I wish we hadn’t done it, especially cutting the Congress out of any substantive role. But its outcome is also unclear. In the middle of deep historical change, we see continuities and discontinuities. I believe the discontinuities between now and then are now much greater than Ross holds. But history in the end will judge both of our assessments with its usual lack of mercy.
The Dish 