by Zack Beauchamp
I almost pity the cognitive dissonance at play here. Toppling Middle East dictators with the U.S. military is obviously good, but Obama did it, so it must be bad. Hence the bizarre intellectual acrobatics in some of the excerpts you're about to see.
As NATO jets bombed the military positions of Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi, the watching rebels cheered, “Allah Akhbar!” Now that is a common Muslim expression, not just used by Islamists, and yet there is something symbolic about it. Allah did not bring the rebels victory, the United States and Europe did. Nevertheless, Allah will get the credit. And that means the triumph will be attributed to the rebels’ piety rather than the West’s warplanes.
The Libyan mujahideen (a/k/a the “rebels”) have reportedly entered Tripoli, captured at least one of Muammar Qaddafi’s sons, and are closing in on Qaddafi’s compound. It appears that those who wanted Qaddafi supplanted by an unknown that is known only to include virulently anti-American Islamists are about to get their wish. Here’s hoping that they are right and I am wrong about what happens next.
The most recent progress happened because NATO shifted course and stepped up military operations, especially American military operations, as critics had been calling for. As the New York Times spells out, when the administration finally took the critiques on board and stepped up U.S. operations, the stalemate tilted in favor of the rebels. The previous strategy of doing just a bit less than what was needed was not working and contributed to months of paralysis.
Feaver is one of the right's best thinkers on international politics, but that NYT article doesn't imply what he says it does. Max Boot:
With those caveats in mind, I think it is nevertheless fitting to extend tentative congratulations to the people of Libya–and to their defenders in the West. In particular to Prime Minister David Cameron, President Nicolas Sarkozy and President Obama: the three driving forces behind the NATO effort to prevent Qaddafi from preserving his regime by slaughtering his own people. As noted before, I wish they had done more, faster, but the fact they acted at all–in the face of considerable criticism–is to their credit, and to the credit of the countries they lead.
Impressively congenial. Walter Russell Mead:
In general, President Obama succeeds where he adopts or modifies the policies of the Bush administration. Where (as on Israel) he has tried to deviate, his troubles begin. The most irritating argument anyone could make in American politics is that President Obama, precisely because he seems so liberal, so vacillating, so nice, is a more effective neoconservative than President Bush. As is often the case, the argument is so irritating partly because it is so true.
But that's nonsense. Democracy promotion is not the exclusive province of neoconservatives, and Obama's distinctively liberal approach to the idea is dramatically different from Bush's rhetoric sans substance. Stanley Kurtz:
The damage done to the credibility of NATO’s defense capacity by months of unnecessary stalemate has been substantial. We may have narrowly escaped the disaster of a failed intervention, but Iran, Russia, China, South Korea, and other potential adversaries have taken note of the West’s weakness.
Uh-huh. Jonathan Tobin:
There are vast differences between the situation in Libya and those in other brutal and dangerous Middle Eastern dictatorships such as Syria and Iran. But the principle America has a right and a duty to intervene to topple governments that are a proven danger to both their own people and the rest of the world has once again been vindicated in Libya. The victory being celebrated in Tripoli does not constitute a license for endless war against dictators, but it ought to put both Syria’s Assad and the mullahs in Iran on notice there is no guarantee they won’t meet the same fate as Qaddafi. Those who would seek to exploit the natural reluctance of Americans to enter future conflicts in order to give them such a guarantee are having a bad day. When we hear their isolationist arguments in the future, let’s remember extending the reach of liberty is something very much in America’s best interests.
Freedom-fighters are celebrating across the Twittersphere, though the identity of the “rebels” on the ground is still somewhat murky as always with these revolts.
Finally, Big Peace writer "Niccolo Machiavelli:"
So what happens if Libya falls under the control of radical Islamists? For one thing, they will have plenty of money to throw at their dream of a global Islamic revolution. Libya has the ninth largest oil reserves in the world, estimated to be 41.5 billion barrels. That will buy a lot of suicide bombers, advanced weapons, and terrorist recruits.
It all makes sense now. That was Obama's plan all along!
The Dish 