Several weeks ago when President Obama reportedly assured congressional leaders that Americas intervention in Libya would involve days not weeks" skeptics mistakenly worried about mission creep. They should have feared mission gallop.
Or perhaps mission meander. At about this point in foreign policy misadventures the usual question is: What is Plan B? Todays question is: What was Plan A? When Obama inserted America into what was and ostensibly still is a preemptive war to protect Libyan civilians from Libyas government he neglected to clarify a few things such as: Do the armed rebels trying to overthrow that government still count as civilians?
That is however irrelevant if the assumption is that no Libyan is safe as long as Moammar Gaddafi is in power. If so regime change is a logical imperative of humanitarian imperialism.
Have you noticed how many of the U.S. armed services recruiting appeals on television and in advertisements in airports and elsewhere show this or that service engaged in humanitarian relief operations distributing food and medicine? These present the U.S. military as the Red Cross with for reasons that are unclear weapons. Given that some of the services sometimes seem reluctant to recruit for their primary mission maintaining a credible capability for war it is not so odd that the Obama administration flinches from the word war."
The administration has retired the short-lived and redundant obfuscation kinetic military action" which supposedly described what all those warships and war aircraft were doing with all those munitions. It validated George Orwells axiom (in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language") that the great enemy of clear language is insincerity."
Now the administration must decide how to characterize those on whose behalf we have gone to war. They are rebels and America born in rebellion and culturally disposed to skepticism about authority is inclined to think kindly of rebels. This was particularly so during the 1960s especially on college campuses. On one of them Antioch the students full of idealism and empty of information gathered to watch To Die in Madrid" a documentary about the Spanish Civil War. When the narrator intoned about a column of soldiers The rebels advanced on Madrid" the students cheered unaware that the rebels were Gen. Francos fascists.
Not all rebels are admirable so when the administration said there would be no American boots on the ground in Libya it left room for American shoes worn by CIA operatives. Evidently some are now among the insurgents humming a Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein tune:
Getting to know you getting to know all about you.
Getting to like you getting to hope you like me."
Perhaps the CIA operatives should have stayed home and talked to some senators who seem to know whats what. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) refers to the Libyan rebels as part of a pro-democracy movement." Perhaps they are. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) must think so. Serving as usual as Sancho Panza to Sen. John McCains Don Quixote Graham said last Sunday (on Face the Nation") We should be taking the fight to Tripoli."
But not (yet) to Yamoussoukro capital of Ivory Coast. Members of the Congressional Libyan Liberation Caucus it does not formally exist (yet) presumably subscribe to the doctrine R2P." That is the accepted shorthand for responsibility to protect." This notion is central to humanitarian imperialism a project that certainly promises to provide steady work. The Libyan venture is coinciding with a humanitarian disaster in Ivory Coast where corpses are piling up by the hundreds and the fighting is producing displaced persons by the hundreds of thousands. They will have to make do with U.N. and French interveners until Americas humanitarian imperialists can get around to them.
Obamas inability or reluctance to say clearly why we are involved in Libya or under what conditions the mission might be said to have been accomplished has occasioned comparisons with Iraq. A more apposite comparison is to Jimmy Carters invasion of Iran a nation twice as large as France with eight helicopters. This became emblematic of a floundering president out of his depth.
As Calvin Coolidge who knew his depth was leaving the presidency in March 1929 he said Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business." Before an administration can do that it must define its responsibilities and competence with sufficient modesty to acknowledge that some things are not its business.
Several weeks ago when President Obama reportedly assured congressional leaders that Americas intervention in Libya would involve days not weeks" skeptics mistakenly worried about mission creep. They should have feared mission gallop.
Or perhaps mission meander. At about this point in foreign policy misadventures the usual question is: What is Plan B? Todays question is: What was Plan A? When Obama inserted America into what was and ostensibly still is a preemptive war to protect Libyan civilians from Libyas government he neglected to clarify a few things such as: Do the armed rebels trying to overthrow that government still count as civilians?
That is however irrelevant if the assumption is that no Libyan is safe as long as Moammar Gaddafi is in power. If so regime change is a logical imperative of humanitarian imperialism.
Have you noticed how many of the U.S. armed services recruiting appeals on television and in advertisements in airports and elsewhere show this or that service engaged in humanitarian relief operations distributing food and medicine? These present the U.S. military as the Red Cross with for reasons that are unclear weapons. Given that some of the services sometimes seem reluctant to recruit for their primary mission maintaining a credible capability for war it is not so odd that the Obama administration flinches from the word war."
The administration has retired the short-lived and redundant obfuscation kinetic military action" which supposedly described what all those warships and war aircraft were doing with all those munitions. It validated George Orwells axiom (in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language") that the great enemy of clear language is insincerity."
Now the administration must decide how to characterize those on whose behalf we have gone to war. They are rebels and America born in rebellion and culturally disposed to skepticism about authority is inclined to think kindly of rebels. This was particularly so during the 1960s especially on college campuses. On one of them Antioch the students full of idealism and empty of information gathered to watch To Die in Madrid" a documentary about the Spanish Civil War. When the narrator intoned about a column of soldiers The rebels advanced on Madrid" the students cheered unaware that the rebels were Gen. Francos fascists.
Not all rebels are admirable so when the administration said there would be no American boots on the ground in Libya it left room for American shoes worn by CIA operatives. Evidently some are now among the insurgents humming a Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein tune:
Getting to know you getting to know all about you.
Getting to like you getting to hope you like me."
Perhaps the CIA operatives should have stayed home and talked to some senators who seem to know whats what. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) refers to the Libyan rebels as part of a pro-democracy movement." Perhaps they are. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) must think so. Serving as usual as Sancho Panza to Sen. John McCains Don Quixote Graham said last Sunday (on Face the Nation") We should be taking the fight to Tripoli."
But not (yet) to Yamoussoukro capital of Ivory Coast. Members of the Congressional Libyan Liberation Caucus it does not formally exist (yet) presumably subscribe to the doctrine R2P." That is the accepted shorthand for responsibility to protect." This notion is central to humanitarian imperialism a project that certainly promises to provide steady work. The Libyan venture is coinciding with a humanitarian disaster in Ivory Coast where corpses are piling up by the hundreds and the fighting is producing displaced persons by the hundreds of thousands. They will have to make do with U.N. and French interveners until Americas humanitarian imperialists can get around to them.
Obamas inability or reluctance to say clearly why we are involved in Libya or under what conditions the mission might be said to have been accomplished has occasioned comparisons with Iraq. A more apposite comparison is to Jimmy Carters invasion of Iran a nation twice as large as France with eight helicopters. This became emblematic of a floundering president out of his depth.
As Calvin Coolidge who knew his depth was leaving the presidency in March 1929 he said Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business." Before an administration can do that it must define its responsibilities and competence with sufficient modesty to acknowledge that some things are not its business.
