Free Republic

Anyone who believes that NATO’s overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi is a “success” for President Obama’s foreign policy should listen to the speech of Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council, at the “liberation day” celebrations in Benghazi: “We are an Islamic country,” the de facto president of Libya proclaimed to the crowds shouting “Allahu Akbar.” “We take the Islamic religion as the core of our new government. The constitution will be based on our Islamic religion.”

In his statement marking the death of Muhammar Gaddafi last week, President Obama inserted a mystifying passage: “[T]he Libyan people now have a great responsibility — to build an inclusive and tolerant and democratic Libya that stands as the ultimate rebuke to Qaddafi’s dictatorship….” “An inclusive and tolerant and democratic Libya.” Can we mull that over with a glass of wine at the faculty club? Obama added this — it would be wrong to call it a demand, more of a request or an imprecation, yoking heterogeneous ideas by violence together, like metaphysical poetry: “And we call on our Libyan...