Reportorial jaws were heard dropping out as far as the Blue Ridge, when Barack Obama hinted yesterday that regime change in Libya might not be essential.
President Obama indicated on Tuesday that Muammar Qadhafi may still have an opportunity to “change his approach” and put in place “significant reforms” in the Libyan government.
Asked by NBC’s Savannah Guthrie what the U.S. commitment is in Libya if Qadhafi remains in power but continues to pose a threat to his people, Obama appeared to leave the door open for political reforms.
“You are absolutely right that as long as Qadhafi remains in power, and unless he changes his approach and there are significant reforms in the Libyan government that allow the Libyan people to express themselves, there are still going be potential threats against Libyan people—unless he is going to step down,” Obama said.
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James Poulos contends that this kind of erratic policy shifting has become a recognizable pattern of the Obama presidency.
Obama’s puzzling leadership style has driven more than a few critics to plunge into labyrinthine investigations of his personality in the hopes of finding some explanatory key tucked away at its center.
Nonetheless, this is a fool’s errand. What matters is not whether the president is, for instance, a passive-aggressive guy, but whether he is a passive-aggressive president. The soap opera surrounding our Libyan engagement, and Obama’s halting and irregular efforts at managing it, have me convinced that the answer is yes.
A pattern has emerged. With the Wisconsin union drama, with the long, tormented passage and reversal of Obamacare, even with the Skip Gates scandal, the president has oscillated, one way or the other and sometimes both, between a mild-mannered non-interventionism and a terse, testy, yet attenuated variety of interventionism. So it is again with Libya. Neither the passivity nor the aggressiveness is without its bemused critics, right and left. And neither has proven very effective. Put together, they seem to deliver the worst of both worlds. His errors unforced, his support unreliable, his strategy inscrutable, Obama as president has time and again left allies and opponents in an uncanny perpetual lurch.
I think myself that, as was speculated by some on the basis of Obama’s autobiography and his 2008 campaign, that Barack Obama operates in most circumstances with the most extreme caution, voting “Present” 130 times in the Illinois State Senate, defining himself with broad strokes of gorgeous rhetoric, and intentionally allowing his audience to project their wishes and fantasies onto him without committing himself to very much.
Barack Obama proved to be personally deeply invested in socializing health care, but beyond that single issue he has merely played the part of a conventional democrat, faithfully delivering the goods to important constituencies from SEIU to Goldman Sachs. Outside of trading political favors for support, and extending the welfare state one more big step, Barack Obama has proven timid, indecisive, and prone to reverse positions.
He has not withdrawn from Afghanistan, he has not closed the holding facility at Guantanamo, and he has reversed course on civil trials for terrorists. Serious issues, particularly risky choices in the realm of foreign policy (where former law lecturers, foundation board members, and state senators may feel just a bit out of their depth) seem to induce paralysis and vacillation.
Watching Obama’s behavior with respect to the civilian insurrection against the Libya dictatorship, I find myself reminded of John Randolph of Roanoke’s description of his cousin Edmund Randolph: “Like the chameleon on the aspen, always trembling, always changing.”
Robert Krikorian, at NR’s The Corner, warned that weak presidents can provoke US adversaries (even with strong female staffers to take up the slack) and provoked squeals of girlish outrage from Jamison Foser.
One of the reasons Khrushchev gambled on missiles in Cuba is that he perceived JFK as a weak man when they met in Vienna. Conversely, one of the reasons Khomeini released the hostages just as Reagan was taking the oath of office was his “Ronnie Ray-guns” reputation (something the air traffic controllers ignored — which itself became another lesson for our enemies). Do you think Putin and A-jad and Chavez and the ChiComs are more afraid of Obama now? It was obvious to most of us that Hillary has more, uh, stones than Obama, but to have it confirmed so publicly for less-attentive foreign goons means they’re that much more likely to try to push us and see how The One responds.
Before you send me any burning bras, the problem is not with women leaders — the enemies of the Virgin Queen and the Iron Lady can attest to that. The problem is not even with the president having strong female subordinates. Rather, Obama’s pusillanimity has been hugely magnified by the contrast with the women directing his foreign policy and the fact that they nagged him to attack Libya until he gave in. Maybe it’s unfair and there shouldn’t be any difference from having a male secretary of state do the same thing, but there is.
So we have the worst situation of all. Instead of a strong leader resisting calls for an unjustified military action — or even a strong leader resolutely supporting the military action — we have a timorous and irresolute leader reluctantly caving in to the demands of his staff. We are in for a heap of trouble.
But even Robert Dreyfuss, at the Nation, (who denounces them for it) agrees that the resolve to act in the Libyan crisis was supplied by several women in the Administration, not by Barack Obama.
We’d like to think that women in power would somehow be less pro-war, but in the Obama administration at least it appears that the bellicosity is worst among Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power. All three are liberal interventionists, and all three seem to believe that when the United States exercises military force it has some profound, moral, life-saving character to it. Far from it. Unless President Obama’s better instincts manage to reign in his warrior women—and happily, there’s a chance of that—the United States could find itself engaged in open war in Libya, and soon. The troika pushed Obama into accepting the demands of neoconservatives, such as Joe Lieberman, John McCain and The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, along with various other liberal interventionists outside the administration, such as John Kerry. The rode roughshod over the realists in the administration
Jezebel’s Irin Carmon categories the discussion under “Emasculation,” and headlines her link collection “The Many Ways To Say “Hillary Stole Obama’s Balls.”
A rebel fighter looks on as missiles strike vehicles belonging to Colonel Qaddafi’s forces (Reuters photo)
Western aid to the Libyan insurgency, in the form of French fighter jets and US cruise missiles, arrived in the nick of time, preventing Muamar Qaddafi’s armed forces from capturing the rebellion capital of Benghazi and dealing a possibly fatal blow to the revolt against his authority.
The Guardian’s correspondent Richard Pendlebury reports that a Qaddafi-loyalist armored column was destroyed just as it closed in on Benghazi.
Benghazi just about hung on. ...
Gaddafi’s armoured forces failed in their attempt to blitzkrieg a way, using tanks and heavy artillery, into the centre of this rebel stronghold.
It was the dictator’s last chance, because Nato airpower then took a terrible toll. ...
The evidence of this mauling could be seen yesterday all along the main highway leading into the city from the south.
Outside the university, where Gaddafi forces had raised his green flag on Saturday morning, several vehicles were burned out, probably hit during ground fighting.
For the first mile after that the wrecks I saw were also probably the result of desperate rebel attempts to stem Gaddafi’s armoured thrust.
A knocked-out Gaddafi tank straddled the central reservation, the result, it seemed, of a hit by a rocket propelled grenade.
A few hundred yards away a wrecked armoured car was still smoking; across the road a tank transporter had been destroyed by an explosion which also felled a large tree.
But a little further out of Benghazi I came across the first, indisputable evidence of Nato airstrikes and their effectiveness. In a field a few yards from the road lay the decapitated and upturned turret of a main battle tank. It was some distance from the crushed and burned-out carcass, from which huge pieces of armour plate had also been torn off and scattered as if feathers, by a massive explosion.
Smoke on the horizon drew us onwards. And suddenly, there it was: The breathtaking and dreadful spectacle of an armoured column which had in the last hours been hit suddenly and with utter devastation from the air.
An armoured personnel carrier was still burning on its heavy transporter, one of several lying destroyed in the fields beside the road. There were maybe two dozen vehicles in all.
The most arresting sight was a line of huge and relatively modern self-propelled guns. Their large calibre cannon were easily within shelling range of central Benghazi. But missile strikes had ripped the tanks to pieces, their turrets and guns lying twisted and grotesque.
Smashed: A tank belonging to forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi burns after an air strike by coalition forces
Cooking pots, opened ration packs and blankets, scattered about the wreckage, suggested that their crews had been bivouacked here for the night when targeted.
Many of them had been killed, a rebel fighter told me.
A Tomahawk Missile cost $569,000 in FY99, so if my calculations are correct, they cost a little over $736,000 today assuming they are the same make and model. The United States fired 110 missiles yesterday, which adds up to a cost of around $81 million. That’s… about 33 times the amount of money National Public Radio receives in grants each year from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which the House of Representatives… wants to de-fund.
The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
—Senator Barack Obama, Dec. 20, 2007. (Hat tip to Ann Althouse, Alex Tabarrock, and Radley Balko.
Megrahi welcomed home in August by Muamar Gadaffi’s son and designated successor, Saif al-Islam
The Telegraph reports that unidentified “senior official” source has revealed that predictions of the Lockerbie bomber’s imminent demise have proven inaccurate.
So much for the “within three months” legal basis for his compassionate release. Of course, we already knew that compassion had nothing to do with this. It was simply a sordid sale of justice by Labour in return for an oil deal.
The health of the Lockerbie bomber has “not deteriorated” since his release from prison three months ago – despite doctors’ assessments that he would have died by now, a senior source has told The Sunday Telegraph.
Megrahi, who is suffering terminal prostate cancer, was sent home to Libya to die after medical experts concluded in a report on July 30 he had just three months left to live. The time span was crucial because only prisoners with three months or less to survive are eligible for release on compassionate grounds.
The disclosure will reignite the row over the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds despite his conviction for the murder of 270 people when Pan Am flight 103 exploded in mid-air over Lockerbie in 1988.
Within three weeks of the medical examination by Professor Karol Sikora, one of Britain’s leading cancer specialists, Megrahi was put on a plane and sent home to Tripoli to die.
But three months on from Prof Sikora’s diagnosis, Megrahi is well enough to “walk and talk” and shows no sign of deterioration, according to a senior source involved in his release.
The source told The Sunday Telegraph: “His condition has not deteriorated in three months. He is pretty much in the same way as he was when this all started. He is just as he was. There is nothing that leads anyone to believe he is in any different condition to when he left Scotland.”
Jules Crittenden comments on the not-wholly-unexpected confirmation via a leak to the Times of London that, yes, Virginia, the Labour Government really did trade the Lockerbie bomber for a BP oil deal.
Remember when the United States and Britain used to make murderous, terrorism-supporting dictators tremble? They even made Moammar Ghadafi cry uncle and the Iranians bring their nuke program to a temporary halt back in 2003, when they took out Saddam. It was another time, when people used to say it was all about blood for oil. We didn’t actually get any oil for that blood. But in a new, gentler time, apparently it’s possible to swap mass murderers for oil. Think of the possibilities.
15 of 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and a recent West Point study, reported by Reuters, demonstrates that spoiled Saudi young men, free to live a life of idleness funded by the Kingdom’s oil exactions on the civilized world’s economy, make up the leading portion of Al Qaeda’s membership.
Most al Qaeda fighters in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia and Libya and many are university-aged students, said a study released on Wednesday by researchers at the U.S. Army’s West Point military academy.
The study was based on 606 personnel records collected by al Qaeda in Iraq and captured by coalition troops in October. It includes data on fighters who entered Iraq, largely through Syria, between August 2006 and August 2007.
The researchers at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center found that 41 percent of the fighters were Saudi nationals.
Libyan nationals accounted for the second largest group entering Iraq in that time period with about 19 percent of the total, followed by Syrians and Yemenis each at 8 percent, Algerians with 7 percent and Moroccans at 6 percent. ...
According to the study, the average age of the 606 fighters who entered over that one-year period was 24-25. One was 15 years old.
The authors called that finding “worrisome.”
“The incitement of a new generation of jihadis to join the fight in Iraq, or plan operations elsewhere, is one of the most worrisome aspects of the ongoing fight in Iraq,” they wrote.
“The United States should not confuse gains against al-Qa’ida’s Iraqi franchises as fundamental blows against the organization outside of Iraq. So long as al-Qa’ida is able to attract hundreds of young men to join its ranks, it will remain a serious threat to global security.”
The researchers found that of the 157 fighters who listed an occupation, 43 percent said they were students.
“Universities have become a critical recruiting field for al Qaeda,” the study said.
Saudi Arabia and Libya, both considered allies by the United States in its fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks, according to senior American military officials.
The data come largely from a trove of documents and computers discovered in September, when American forces raided a tent camp in the desert near Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. The raid’s target was an insurgent cell believed to be responsible for smuggling the vast majority of foreign fighters into Iraq.
The most significant discovery was a collection of biographical sketches that listed hometowns and other details for more than 700 fighters brought into Iraq since August 2006. ...
Saudis accounted for the largest number of fighters listed on the records by far — 305, or 41 percent — American intelligence officers found as they combed through documents and computers in the weeks after the raid. The data show that despite increased efforts by Saudi Arabia to clamp down on would-be terrorists since Sept. 11, 2001, when 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, some Saudi fighters are still getting through.
Libyans accounted for 137 foreign fighters, or 18 percent of the total, the senior American military officials said. They discussed the raid with the stipulation that they not be named because of the delicate nature of the issue.
When an open boat bearing illegal immigrants to Europe from Libya lost power, Boudafel, a Maltese tug towing a tuna-breeding plant to Spain threw those on board a line and proceeded to give them a tow.
The boat then foundered and sank, and the Maltese tug, obeying orders from owners ashore, refused to stop to provide further assistance.
Survivors were left to cling to the buoys holding up the tuna farm’s system of nets. In the end, 27 young men were rescued by the Italian Navy.
For three days and three nights, these African migrants clung desperately to life. Their means of survival is a tuna net, being towed across the Mediterranean by a Maltese tug that refused to take them on board after their frail boat sank.
Malta and Libya, where they had embarked on their perilous journey, washed their hands of them. Eventually, they were rescued by the Italian navy.
The astonishing picture shows them hanging on to the buoys that support the narrow runway that runs around the top of the net. They had had practically nothing to eat or drink.
Last night, on the island of Lampedusa, the 27 young men – from Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sudan and other countries – told of their ordeal. As their flimsy boat from Libya floundered adrift for six days, two fishing boats failed to rescue them. On Wednesday, the Maltese boat, the Budafel allowed them to mount the walkway but refused to have them on board.
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Last Monday, another open boat containing 53 illegal immigrant African men, women, and children also lost its engine, and was sighted in distress from the air 90 miles south of Malta. Contact with the vessel was lost, and at first the 27 survivors rescued clinging to the tuna nets were believed to have come from this vessel.
In the end, it was established to have been a second boat, and bodies of its passengers were found Friday.
A French navy ship found around 20 bodies floating off the south coast of the Mediterranean island of Malta on Friday, a maritime official said.
The frigate Motte-Picquet was on a routine surveillance mission when it spotted the bodies.
“We are in the process of picking up some dead bodies,” said Emmanuel Dinh, spokesman for France’s Mediterranean maritime authority.
He said he could not give a precise number but said: “There will certainly be around 20.”
Dinh said there was no sign of a boat and the navy could not yet identify where the bodies came from.
“They are in a state of decomposition so they have been in the sea for several days,” he added.
Last week 27 shipwrecked Africans spent three days clinging to tuna nets in the Mediterranean while Malta and Libya argued over who should rescue them. They were eventually picked up by the Italian navy.
Malta refused to allow a Spanish tugboat to land another 26 would-be migrants. Spain decided to take them in.
The migrants’ plight sparked calls from European Union officials for EU countries to adopt common rules to clarify who is responsible for saving them at sea.
