Mar 29 2011

Obama’s Libyan policy leaves many questions unanswered

 

President Barack Obama made his case Monday night for ordering the U.S. military to intervene in Libya, but he left a lot of unanswered questions and took heat from just about every position imaginable.

Some criticize the president for acting too slowly on getting a “no-fly” zone established and using U.S. resources to enforce it.

Some say he acted too quickly.

Some say he acted beyond his constitutional authority.

Meanwhile, the president did not speak of cost, how long the U.S. will remain involved in the “NATO effort” or rule out arming the rebels.

All this at a time when a U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan grinds on at a high cost for Americans in terms of lives and money — and high skepticism in the region about U.S. motives.

I find the intervention in Libya perplexing at best.

The president hangs his hat on the potential for a massacre of innocent civilians in what clearly represents a Libyan civil war.

Granted, NATO will at some point direct the Libyan operations, but everyone knows that regardless of who NATO leaders say is “in charge,” the U.S. will be calling the shots, literally.

And if Obama is really concerned about the massacre and mistreatment of civilians in a civil war, how does he explain U.S. policy (or non-policy) with regard to any number of countries in Africa where authoritarian thugs — on both sides of the civil war equation — have been killing, raping and otherwise subverting thousands of innocent civilians for years.

It seems to boil down to oil and terrorism, and that two-horse parlay continues to drive U.S. policy and the fortunes of its leaders down a troubled road.

As an aside: One interesting and under-reported note about intervention in Libya involves two Middle Eastern states jumping into the NATO effort, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Qatar pilots are flying missions over Libya and the UAR has provided warplanes to the effort.

These and other “moderate” Middle Eastern countries take a lot of heat for not behaving more proactively with regard to fighting terrorism and taking stronger stands against oppressive dictatorships in the region.

These small efforts by Qatar and the UAR are worth noting and watching, I think.

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