By bombing Libya, President Obama accomplished some things once thought impossible in America: War-mongering liberals: Liberals are now chest-thumping about military "progress" in Libya. Even liberal TV and radio cite ingenious reasons why an optional, preemptive US intervention in an oil-producing Arab country, without prior congressional approval or majority public support -- and at a time of soaring deficits -- is well worth supporting, in a sort of "my president, right or wrong" fashion. Europe first: Many Americans have long complained about the opportunistic, utopian Europeans. Under the protective US defense shield, they often privately urged us to deal with dangerous foreign dictators -- while staying above the fray to criticize America, at the same time seeking trade advantages and positive global PR. But now the wily Obama has outwaited even the French. He has shamed them into acting with a new possum-like US strategy of playing dead until finally even Europe was exasperated -- almost as if the president were warning them, "We don't mind the Khadafy bloodletting if you, who are much closer to it, don't mind." The British Guardian and French Le Monde will be too knee-deep in the Libyan war, busy chalking up Anglo-French "wins" and worrying about European oil concessions, to charge America with the usual imperialism, colonialism and militarism. Iraq was just a Libyan prequel: Conservatives have complained that past opposition to George W. Bush's antiterrorism policies and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was more partisan than principled. Obama ended that debate by showing that not only can he embrace the Bush-Cheney tribunals, preventative detentions, renditions, Predator attacks, wiretaps and Gitmo, but now attack an Arab oil-exporting country without fear of Hollywood, congressional cutoffs, Moveon.org ads or Cindy Sheehan. In short, Obama has ensured that the antiwar movement will never be quite the same. Monster-in-recovery: The Khadafy clan has been wooing Westerners through oil money and multicultural gobbledy-gook. In the last few years, the British released the Lockerbie bomber; Saif Khadafy, the would-be artist and scholar son of Col. Moammar Khadafy, essentially bought a PhD from the London School of Economics -- and singers Mariah Carey, 50 Cent, Beyonce and others earned a pile crooning for the Khadafys. Then, suddenly, Obama spoiled the fun and profits by turning Khadafy from a rehabilitated monster back into Ronald Reagan's old "Mad Dog of the Middle East." Stuff happens: Many Iraq war supporters condemned Abu Ghraib as the poorly supervised, out-of-control prison it was. Lax oversight resulted in the sexual humiliation of detained Iraqi insurgents. It was a deplorable episode in which, nonetheless, no one was killed, and yet it took a big toll on the administration's credibility. While the media covered the Libyan bombing and the Mideast uprisings, however, a number of Afghan civilians allegedly were executed by a few rogue US soldiers -- a far worse transgression than anything that happened at Abu Ghraib. Yet apparently in the new climate, the media can ignore the incident. Obama made "stuff happens" a legitimate defense for those doing their best to run a war from Washington. War really is tiring: The media serially blamed a supposedly lazy Ronald Reagan for napping during military operations. George W. Bush was criticized for cutting brush at his ranch while soldiers died in Iraq. Obama rendered all such criticism as mere nitpicking when he started aerial bombardment amid golfing, handicapping the NCAA basketball tournament and taking his family to Rio. The road to Damascus? After Bush's interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, many war-weary Americans believed that we would never again get involved in a Mideast war. But with Obama's bombing of Libya, giddy American interventionists are again eyeing Iran, Syria -- and beyond! Obama turned America upside down when he bombed Libya -- and in ways we could have scarcely imagined. author@victorhanson.com Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinio...possible_X9jFeWBdjHKI2f7k9R45UI#ixzz1IN14ZWCe
Public support for the Libyan war is going to erode rapidly. If Obama doesn't get out of Libya now it is going to swing like an Albatross around his neck in 2012.
I haven't seen any polls, but other than a few neo-cons and obama lapdogs, I haven't seen any support for it. Of course, the media is desperately trying to paint it as a courageous effort to save innocent lives, but almost no one is buying that. We know if Libya was in black africa or asia and had no oil, no one would care what Ghaddafi did. The one thing the quoted article missed was the most ominous. What obama has done is underline how important it is for dictators to have nuclear weapons. Ghaddaffi foolishly gave up his nuke program. If he had nukes, there is no way we get involved and certainly not the french. So in addition to his other triumphs, obama has guaranteed that the iranians will never give up their nuke program.
It is like an absurdity of some off Broadway play watching a Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter/Bush-Neocon lap dogs using the same arguments that the left used when Bush started two wars for the sole purpose of making an argument based on political expediency and opportunity to trash Obama. Truly, the right demonstrates their magnificent duplicity in this matter. All that matter is negativity toward Obama to this crowd. Not consistency of principles, or anything even resembling a static reasoning process.
I agree. But I do support bombing Libya, since they hate Israel. The way to deal with nukes in Iran is to nuke Iran. Nuke the nukes. There will be little collateral damage, since most Iranians support terror against Israel. You can't count terrorist supporters as civilian collateral damage. God bless Israel.
âFirst of all, I donât think we should be doing it because itâs not a humanitarian issue as the president laid out⦠We are paying this because, we are paying $55 million a day for the presidentâs ideology of a one world utopia which we will be playing a leading role in.â