A Dangerous Precedent

Weekly Standard ^ | 09/10/2008 | David Schenker

[forkinsocket]

The moral and political cost of Libya's rehabilitation.

SECRETARY OF STATE Condoleezza Rice's visit to Libya last week represents the final step in a decades-long U.S. effort to reform and rehabilitate the rogue state. A charter member of the U.S. Department of State's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, after its nuclear program was disclosed in 2003, Tripoli demonstrated contrition and agreed to compensate American victims of a 1988 terrorist attack. Libya was scratched from the list in 2006, and this past August Washington struck a deal with Tripoli that removed the final hurdles in normalizing the bilateral relationship.

The Bush administration considers the reintegration of Libya to be among its crowning foreign policy achievements and a roadmap for other rogue states. Indeed, in 2006 Secretary Rice described Libya as "an important model as nations around the world press for changes in behavior by the Iranian and North Korean regimes." Despite the self-congratulations, however, the agreement is not the unqualified success it is portrayed to be. The rollback of Libya's nuclear program was a strategic achievement, but it was not without a political and moral cost.

In fact, the August deal that paved the way for Rice's trip contains an unprecedented arrangement in which victims of a U.S. retaliatory strike in response to Libyan state-supported terrorism will receive compensation. The accord has profound implications for U.S. counterterrorism and military policy.

[forkinsocket]

.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

In fact, the August deal that paved the way for Rice's trip contains an unprecedented arrangement in which victims of a U.S. retaliatory strike in response to Libyan state-supported terrorism will receive compensation.

In other words, we pay Qaddafi because we bombed Libya in retaliation for their terrorism. An ugly precedent is being set here by Rice, who's apparently returned to the Brent Scowcroft school of "pragmatic" (i.e. unprincipled) foreign policy. Reaching accommodations with dictators is a favored technique of the Scowcroft-Kissinger-Baker school of foreign policy, the old-school alternative to neo-conservatism. I'll stick with the neo-conservatism.