I have absolutely no idea the purpose of these remarks on ABC from Sec. Clinton, beyond covering for a commander in chief making his way home as a crisis escalates, this time politically. They make absolutely no sense to me at all at this point, but nothing the Obama administration is doing or saying on Libya makes sense, which now includes Sec. Clinton.
Not only does she admit she’s not aware “personally” of what she went on to tell Diane Sawyer, but she goes on to say some of what she’s imparting is “theater,” while throwing out the possibility that one of Col. Gadhafi’s sons was killed as she simultaneously admits the “evidence is not sufficient” for her to confirm the information she just imparted.
It’s like the world edition of As Libya Turns, with Clinton offering up sound bites that sound like a foreign policy soap opera, as she in the next breath proclaimed to be “very relaxed about it” all in an effort to obviously shore up Pres. Obama, as criticism at home escalated exponentially.
“We’ve heard about other people close to him reaching out to people that they know around the world — Africa, the Middle East, Europe, North America, beyond — saying what do we do? How do we get out of this? What happens next?” Clinton said in an exclusive interview. “I’m not aware that he personally has reached out, but I do know that people allegedly on his behalf have been reaching out.”
“Some of it is theater. Some of it is, you know, kind of, shall we say game playing, to try to do one message to one group, another message to somebody else,” she added. “A lot of it is just the way he behaves. It’s somewhat unpredictable. But some of it, we think, is exploring. You know, what are my options, where could I go, what could I do. And we would encourage that.”
Clinton said she’s also heard reports that one of Gadhafi’s sons may have been killed in the air strikes. But she added that the “evidence is not sufficient” to confirm.
Fox reports Obama has canceled public events for Wednesday, with the White House press corp coming home before the President, his own plans reportedly to include cutting his trip short by “hours.” However, no other outlet has offered a similar report, though this is not all that surprising to hear at this point.
Then there is Pres. Obama finally coming to grips that Gadhafi is very likely to stay in power, something that was clear from the top for anyone whose studied foreign policy.
“As long as Qadhafi remains in power — unless he changes his approach provides the Libyan people the opportunity to express themselves freely and there are significant reforms by the Libyan government, and he steps down — there’s still going to be a potential threat to the Libyan people,” Obama told reporters at a news conference here, his final stop on a five-day tour of Latin America. “We will continue to support the efforts to protect the Libyan people, but we will not be in the lead.” – Barack Obama: Libyan air campaign could last
It must be very ugly in our President’s brain right now as he tries to reconcile what he wants to happen with the realities of war and the U.S.’s role in it, which cannot be changed simply because Obama has deemed it must.
Pres. Obama is operating his Libya policy, such as there is one, under the assumption that because his plan is to remove the United States from the narrative of the no-fly action by handing over duties to the coalition or NATO immediately, that this is as easy as it sounds and can be done on his word. What this ignores is U.S. history, our role as leader of the free world and in taking the helm on every military intervention in modern times, not to mention what is expected of the American President at home.
The good news so far is that the American public haven’t caught up with the reality the Obama administration is facing and all the President and his team can hope is that they’ll get lucky or something will break, it may take both, before the public gets wind of the facts, which are ugly all around.
Obama’s policy also ignores what happened under Bush, as well as what Obama’s done in the region since becoming president. Pres. Obama believes his Cairo speech wiped out what has happened in Pakistan, but especially in Afghanistan, including the multitude of drone attacks, civilian deaths, and troops deployed, while his Administration has failed utterly on any coherent (there’s that word again) Middle East policy that deals effectively with the Palestinian and Israeli challenge.
Rachel Maddow once again tried to make the argument for Obama on her show last night, pressing her narrative of the President’s reluctance and also his willingness to change the U.S. interventionist narrative, this time emphasizing Obama’s Cairo speech, and once again, as with last night, her guests, Al Jazeera English’s Ayman Mohyeldin and Gideon Rose of Foreign Affairs, quickly blew her theory out of the water. Obama wanting to turn the page from what came before is simply not enough given the history of the U.S. in the region, which now includes Pres. Obama’s own presidential footprint.
No matter what his intentions, humanitarian and that “Gadhafi must go,” the fact remains Pres. Obama has started a war in Libya and nothing he can say can change this reality or his role in initiating Operation Odyssey Dawn. The fact that Obama did this “on the fly,” to quote Sec. Gates, without thinking through the consequences of military action and the ramification of war becomes more apparent by the day.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters Tuesday that plan to transfer command of the mission in Libya to coalition forces is “complicated.” “We haven’t done something like this on the fly before,” Gates, who is currently overseas on a diplomatic trip to Russia, said. Added Gates, “It’s not surprising to me that it would take a few days to get it all sorted out.” – Talk Radio News
