Posted on 04/23/2011 11:30:41 AM PDT by jazusamo
The current generation of American liberals loves a good war. In recent years theyve fought, with varying degrees of success, the War on Poverty, the War on Hunger, and the War on Carbon. So it seemed ironic that when the liberals of the Obama administration launched a campaign in Libya that seemed truly worthy of being called a war, they were reluctant to use the word. But now that disinclination is starting to make sense because a war is something you generally set out to win.
You cant blame liberals for appropriating the word war to infuse left-wing social and environmental policies with a sense of moral urgency in order to sell them to voters. Try rallying support for a time-limited kinetic operation against poverty. The trouble is that when you engage in the deadly serious business of dropping bombs on an Arab country and taking sides in a civil war actions replete with dangers and unintended consequences you need a stronger basis for acting than the insistence that something must be done.
The Obama administrations decision to intervene in Libya, driven by the liberal interventionist clique headed by Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice, may be based on good intentions. But its underpinned by no consistent principles or coherent foreign policy (why not Syria? Bahrain?), serves no obvious national interest, and seems to have been taken with little thought as to what constitutes success, or what happens a week, a month, a year down the road.
Its a war waged in response to TV news reports from journalists who arrived on the scene ten minutes earlier, and who prefer a simple good-guys-against-bad-guys narrative to a serious analysis of the roots of a conflict, or of the consequences of intervention (this is actually a recognised phenomenon its called the CNN effect). It isnt even a case of What Would Carter Do? Its WWBD?: What Would Bono Do? Its Live Aid with bombs. (Its only fair to note that some prominent conservatives are also afflicted with this mindset.)
This rather simplistic approach to foreign policy is compounded by the Obama administrations eagerness to distinguish itself from the perceived unilateralism of George W Bush. And so, in order to create the impression of the international community acting in concert, the U.S. has had to ally itself with countries and organizations whose motives are rather less noble, but who lacked the firepower to act on their own.
Soeren Kern has written about how French President Nicolas Sarkozy is showboating on the world stage in a bid to fend off attacks from political rivals to his right and divert attention from economic problems. British Prime Minister David Cameron is similarly beset by economic woes, and the Libyan adventure is serving as a welcome distraction from domestic politics; both countries, and other coalition members, have energy interests in the country. And the thugs and crooks that make up the Arab League were happy to play along, calculating that by shining the spotlight on Gaddafi they could both rid themselves of a regional nuisance and divert attention from the plight of their own peoples; although the moment the bombs started falling they defaulted to us against the West mode.
So the intervention in Libya is the half-blood child of multilateralism, an intervention driven in part by genuine humanitarian concerns and in part by naked self-interest. But make no mistake: there could have been no intervention without the Tomahawk missiles and B-2 bombers of the American dont-call-it-war machine.
With so many disparate interests in play, disagreement over strategy and aims, and so little moral authority or political resolve on the part of those conducting the campaign, its not surprising that the situation in Libya is settling into stalemate. More than six weeks after Obama declared that Gaddafi had to go hes still in place, and still killing civilians. And absent both principles and a plan, and given liberals general disdain for the projection of American power overseas, its also not surprising that the Obama administrations commitment is faltering. France and Britain, incapable of finishing the job the U.S. helped them start, have demanded that both the U.S. and other NATO countries do more the participation of most coalition members has so far been limited to having their national flag stuck on a map of the Mediterranean during TV news bulletins. Sarkozy and Cameron asked Obama for more U.S. airstrikes, but all theyve gotten so far is his signature on a joint letter filled with multilateralist boilerplate and the promise of a couple of Predator drones.
Hillary Clintons tough line on Libya is said in part to be influenced by her regret over husband Bills failure to intervene in the 1994 Rwandan genocide; Power and Rice have also invoked the spectre of Rwanda. Libya isnt, and was never going to be, another Rwanda; but if the Obama administration wants a more suitable Rwanda analogy, as well as a timely reminder of the contradictions, messy compromises, and long-term problems inherent when the international community embroils itself in intractable tribal and ethnic disputes in foreign lands, they only have to look from the north of Africa to the east, to Ivory Coast.
There, the UN, which has been involved in the country since 2003, has just overseen the removal of former President Laurent Gbagbo and the installation in his place of Alassane Ouattara, who was declared the winner of last years election. This despite Ouattaras being suspected of involvement in a failed 2002 coup against Gbagbo, which sparked a civil war that pitted the mainly Christian south of the country against the mostly Muslim north, and which the elections were intended to end; despite the fact that when he was prime minister in the early 1990s Ouattara jailed political opponents, including Gbagbo; and despite the fact that Ouattaras forces have committed atrocities against civilians .
Yet Ouattara is now hailed as the man to unite and rebuild Ivory Coast, with a stint at the International Monetary Fund apparently enough to establish his democratic and multilateralist bona fides in the eyes of the international community. As in Libya, France is heavily involved; the former colonial power is keen to shore up its business interests in the country, and has provided the firepower that enabled the UN to oust Gbagbo. And the Obama administration has lent its full support to Ouattara, with Clinton optimistically suggesting that his band of murderous thugs must live up to the ideals and vision articulated by their elected leader. What could go wrong? The odds are that Ivory Coast wont be another Rwanda, but with the country divided along religious lines a long-term civil strife akin to that in Sudan is a real possibility.
Meanwhile, what happens in Libya is anyones guess, but the one thing we can be sure we wont be seeing in anything like the near future is a stable, unified, Gaddafi-less country enjoying excellent relations with the West. Right now it would appear that the best outcome the coalition can hope for is a de facto division of the country, with Gaddafi loyalists holding on to Tripoli and the western half of the country (even assuming Gaddafi himself can be persuaded to accept the hospitality of some fellow despot, which latest reports suggest is unlikely) and the motley assortment of rebels, including Islamic extremists of various stripes, holed up in the east. But such an arrangement would require UN or other international forces on the ground to police it, and at the moment few countries are willing to help enforce the no-fly zone, let alone put boots on the ground.
None of the above is to say that the U.S. and its allies should never intervene in national conflicts where civilian lives are at risk; no-one wants to see women and children being shelled. But we should only do so as a last resort, where action can be taken quickly and effectively, without the risk of being drawn into a civil war, and where we know the people were helping into power are the good guys (remember all the media excitement about those Tweeters and Facebookers in Cairo? Looks like that might not turn out so well). And we certainly shouldnt act as a knee-jerk response to upsetting television pictures. If we can take out a Gaddafi or Assad regime with a few well-aimed missiles, and then offer support to factions who wont lynch Western aid workers, all well and good. And if that sounds like a set of conditions so strict theyll rarely be fulfilled, maybe thats no bad thing.
And any such action should be embarked upon with as little regard for the UN and other transnational talking shops as possible. The fact that so many stars have to be aligned before anything can be done makes a mockery of so-called principles such as the Responsibility to Protect. If theres a guiding principle for humanitarian intervention these days, its the Responsibility to Protect, as long as Russia and China dont object and theres something in it for France. Unfortunately as mentioned above, the Obama administration is compromised in this respect by its rejection of all things Bush, which means fudges and half-measures will be the order of the day until late January 2013 at the earliest.
You would think the U.S. in particular would have learned something from Iraq and Afghanistan; and in those cases it could at least be argued that the national interest was the overriding concern, and not the troubled consciences of Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power. But in Libya the Obama administration is now facing a lose-lose situation, with a choice between getting involved in another lengthy and unpredictable foreign adventure, or walking away and leaving European and Arab states to clear up a mess that it spectacularly helped to create.
If war is hell, even when unavoidable and fought with crystal-clear aims and unshakeable resolve, then war waged by liberals is limbo.
Hypocrisy, the cornerstone of liberalism.
Of course, the have been waging war for over a century against all the principles which made this country great.
interesting that quattara worked for the imf.
pat robertson reported that the elections were crooked.
Ah yes, the War on Poverty, started by LBJ.
Can we call out the liberals on that one, and say that we fought a war on poverty, and poverty won?
Among other bad unintended consequences, the whole “baby mama” culture has been institutionalized among the poor in this country. And we’re not supposed to say anything about that.
Whenever the liberals attack Bush for starting wars or talking about the failures of wars we have fought, I think we should talk about Democrat wars such as the war on poverty. Did we defeat poverty? Did we achieve the objectives we sought? If not why not? And why are liberals apparently immune to criticism about any of this? It’s as if we collectively just accept that we have a “baby mama” culture, we just accept that we have a significant underclass which will never escape poverty. We just accept that inner city schools and neighborhoods are hell holes.
If a conservative effort had resulted in so many hapless and hopeless people living in the ghetto, I’m sure that the liberal view of this would be very different.
Liberals have always been at war with capitalism. It’s the only war they won’t openly declare.
What an absolutely smashing article. Brilliant, well written, to the point, everything. Super! Thanks for posting it!
Interesting analogy between the social idealism and the war philosophy of libs. Yes, I think that is how they think; the good intentions first and effective resolve of problems as a side issue, or a side effect of said intentions. Poor LBJ couldn’t figure out whether to treat Vietnam as an extension of the Great Society or as an actual (gasp!) war. Now Obama (or whoever does his thinking for him) seems to have the same mental block. Thanks for posting!
Since we couldn’t even define victory, there was absolutely no reason to get into this insane war.
Since we couldn’t even define victory, there was absolutely no reason to get into this insane war.
Ahem-- it's not perfect. The Ivory Coast is west of Libya, not east of Libya.
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