Michael Hastings argues that before Libya, Obama's foreign policy decisions were based on the mistakes of the Bush era, "predicated on a foreign-policy doctrine with which he fundamentally disagreed":
[Libya] was the first war he started on his own – and the success of the Libyan rebellion is largely the result of the decisions he made at the very outset of the uprising. … Insiders say Obama laid out five guiding principles for any intervention in Libya: "that it be effective, multilateral, follow international law, put no American boots on the ground, and pursue a well-defined, achievable goal."
This interaction is illuminating:
Gates offered a last-ditch case against intervention, arguing that Libya had little strategic value. He warned that the U.S. often ended up "owning" what happened, pointing to Kosovo and the no-fly zone over Kurdistan in Iraq. He said he was wary of getting involved in a third Muslim country, and feared "a stalemate."
The president answered these arguments himself. According to one participant's summary, Obama said: Look, the question of who rules Libya is probably not a vital interest to the United States. The atrocities threatened don't compare to atrocities in other parts of the world, I hear that. But there's a big "but" here. First of all, acting would be the right thing to do, because we have an opportunity to prevent a massacre, and we've been asked to do it by the people of Libya, their Arab neighbors and the United Nations. And second, the president said, failing to intervene would be a "psychological pendulum, in terms of the Arab Spring, in favor of repression." He concluded: "Just signing on to a no-fly zone so that we have political cover isn't going to cut it. That's not how America leads." Nor, he added, is it the "image of America I believe in."
Simon Tisdall dismisses the success:
The war in Libya was a one-off. It established no new doctrine. Rather, it set a limited post-Iraq paradigm for selective, "do-able", feelgood interventionism. For the seriously oppressed peoples of Syria, Burma, Belarus, Zimbabwe and North Korea, for example, it is a meaningless exercise.
Norman Geras screams.
The Dish 