When Sec. Clinton was first chosen for her job at State some were skeptical she’d have Pres. Obama’s back when it was needed. There was never a doubt in my mind, however, that she would not only be a team player, but one of Pres. Obama’s strongest advocates. It’s who she is, because she knows what a president needs and expects from those inside his administration, especially when he gets himself in trouble.
The rhetorical tactic Clinton uses to make her case on Libya while in Jamaica during a question and answer period, which the State Dept. chose to highlight in a video clip that can’t be embedded, is unbefitting a person of her stature, as she suggests those in Congress questioning Obama on Libya check his or her loyalties.
So I know we live in a hyper-information-centric world right now, and March seems like it’s a decade ago, but by my calendar, it’s only months. And in those months, we have seen an international coalition come together unprecedented between not only NATO, but Arab nations, the Arab League, and the United Nations. This is something that I don’t think anyone could have predicted, but it is a very strong signal as to what the world expects to have happen, and I say with all respect that the Congress is certainly free to raise any questions or objections, and I’m sure I will hear that tomorrow when I testify.
But the bottom line is, whose side are you on? Are you on Qadhafi’s side or are you on the side of the aspirations of the Libyan people and the international coalition that has been created to support them? For the Obama Administration, the answer to that question is very easy.
This is the type of reprehensible rhetoric that Sen. Clinton abhorred when she was criticizing Pres. George W. Bush. But now that it’s a Democratic president, she hypocritically chooses the cowards way out by challenging critics in a way that she wouldn’t if Obama was a Republican.
It’s always been clear to me that Libya could come back to haunt Pres. Obama and those who helped him make this disastrous decision, which includes Sec. Hillary Clinton, along with Samantha Power and U.N. ambassador Dr. Susan Rice, among others. So, it’s circle the wagons time. People are obviously getting nervous, with TIME magazine showing the dangers as the Libya misadventure drags on.
Even if NATO can accomplish its objective or drives Gadhaffi out, it still doesn’t make Pres. Obama’s decision right or legal.
More from John Burns in the New York Times from earlier this week:
Originally envisaged as lasting a matter of weeks, the air campaign is now into its fourth month. It has seen NATO conduct nearly 12,000 air missions over Libya, about one-third of them involving strikes by bombs or missiles, some of them seemingly intended to kill the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The airstrikes have virtually obliterated Colonel Qaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya command compound in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, and reduced the fighting capacity of the Libyan forces by about 50 percent, according to Pentagon estimates. But there has been no sign that the Qaddafi government is at risk of crumbling under the pressure, at least not soon.
Much of the pressure NATO is facing over the Libyan operation comes from the dissent within NATO itself, with some member nations saying the campaign has gone beyond the mandate given by a United Nations Security Council resolution in mid-March that approved NATO action to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya and to undertake other missions to protect the country’s civilian population from the Qaddafi forces.
As Clinton’s bookend and to illustrate the political gamesmanship going on from all quarters, let’s also look at Sen. Mitch McConnell’s remarks:
MCCONNELL: The only thing I can tell you at this point is that there are differences. I’m not sure that these kind of differences might not have been there in a more latent form when you had a Republican president. But I do think there is more of a tendency to pull together when the guy in the White House is on your side. So I think some of these views were probably held by some of my members even in the previous administration, but party loyalty tended to mute them. So yeah, I think there are clearly differences and I think a lot of our members, not having a Republican in the White House, feel more free to express their reservations which might have been somewhat muted during the previous administration.
Now you know why Congress and the Executive Branch don’t work like the founders intended, which is why this country is so profoundly screwed up. It’s all petty politics depending on if your side is being hit and is in power or not. Sec. Clinton and Sen. McConnell openly representing the worst of this example in their comments, proving the juvenile leadership being affllicted on foreign policy decisions, among others.
Sec. Clinton is obliged to make her case for Libya however she wants, but diplomatically it’s sheer amateurism to set your sights on critics who expect the Executive Branch to inform Congress when embroiling this country in a military misadventure that isn’t of strategic importance to the United States.
This is what cost her the nomination, as she deferred to George W. Bush, then tried to make up for her vote on Iraq by criticizing him.
Whose side are you on? Sec. Clinton’s got a lot of nerve asking this question to Americans who expect more transparency from the Executive Branch.
To put a finer point on it, Sec. Clinton is wrong.
If Condoleezza Rice had tried this tactic she’d have been flayed in the media and deservedly so.
Sec. Clinton is too smart not to know how this sounds as she sits in Jamaica pontificating about congressional loyalties. Suggesting critics are on the side of Gadhaffi if we believe Pres. Obama operated in an unwise and possibly illegal manner in his decision on Libya is a low for Sec. Clinton.
I’m sure the boss appreciates it and her critics can finally see what I said from the start, which is when Clinton joins a team she’ll defend it against all manner of wrong and embarrassment, even if it costs her credibility. She’s as loyal as they come, sometimes to her own detriment, which is certainly the case here.
Foreign policy became a political football a long time ago. It’s wrong no matter who’s doing it and dangerous to U.S. interests, with both Clinton and McConnell offering examples of amateur statesmanship from the Democratic and Republican benches.
What’s worse, it that the administration doesn’t have the approval of congress to fall back on. Mr. Obama neither made the case to congress nor to the American people as to why we should be in Libya. So the ‘whose side are you on’ charge has even less weight because we never even chose a side.
Furthur, what is the endgame. Once Quadaffi is gone, what then, nation building ala Iraq and Afganistan? Are we there only to take out the ruler, or to convert the country to a democracy? No one knows, and if they do know, they aren’t telling.
Leading from behind – with a slogan like that, how can the administration not support gay marriage?
Oh, that last sentence; you just couldn’t resist, could you, PWT?
What do you expect from Poor White Trash.
Oh. …and snap.
– Very well said Taylor. That’s what I call fair and balanced.
At least the Republicans are honest. Evil & honest. They make no bones about where their interests lie and what their objectives are.
Sure they give their presidents a pass because they want their side to win. At any cost. To them, power and winning is everything.
It’s only the naïve and guileless Democrats who will never seem to understand this and keep trying to appease and work with those people.
That’s what I call fair and balanced.
I am *so* lovin’ this one, Ramsgate.
sec clinton bitterly dissapoints here. loyalty has been a problem for her in many ways. she lookslike a fool here and she aint no fool. from what i read ehr remars appear to have further enraged congressional leaders esp liberals who now are itnent on defuding libya.
Everyone is “enraged” on this one, Art, and rightfully so.
When loyalty becomes a liability …
Legacy egos in a bunch over this one.
I’m on Qadhafi’s side, if it means not being on Obama’s and Clinton’s side. This is why I lost respect for Clinton during the ’08 campaign; this co-opting of the Bush mindset, this blatent militerism, this arrogance. Where did this come from? One of the fears expressed during the Bush years was the dangers of unrestrained executive power and how it would influence future administrations. Thanks to Bush lap dogs like Clinton, now we know.
Sec. Clinton’s words sadly bring on your predictably inevitable reaction.
What a bait and switch the Obama Administration became on foreign affairs! We are lightyears away from “The Speech” on Iraq. Who was that dashing Illinois State Senator that made those comments and what has President Obama done to him?
Even though people who actually paid attention to the facts on the ground understood what a throw-away that speech was. It was raw meat tossed to a hyper-liberal constituency and ment exactly bupkis when actually trying to figure out Obama’s real foreign policy objectives.
What Obama has become is the worst kind of foolish interventionist possible. It’s “do something” interventionism. No core philosophy need apply. No kind of thinking is necessary. Definitely no planing is involved. National interests of the United States of the U.S.? Sorry, not something that concerns us. This “policy” only requires a passive and reactive Chief Executive; which Obama is in spades.
The minute I saw the Senatorial consensus gelling around a Libyan intervention, I knew we were in for it. While the constitution does require a role for the Congress, and specifically the Senate in foreign affairs; no where does the Constitution require that role to be the village idiot. But that is the role the Senate now plays.
I would be hard pressed to find an institution which suffered more from group-think and the dead hand of “Common Wisdom.” No wonder the Executive has cut it out of the decision making process. With a few rare examples, the Senate does not have one member that has the leadership skills to guide a Boy Scout troop to a latrine. It’s a deeply flawed institution that is chock-a-block full of egomaniacal narcissists who are deeply in love with the sounds of their own voices. I don’t think that there is one original idea among the lot of US Senators.
So when the grey-beards of the Senate started to wring their hands on Libya, and moan about “doing something” and when that something was a no-fly zone, you had to understand that was one really bad idea. The Senate these days unerringly seems to pick the worst possible choice for our foreign policy actions.
Unfortunately these are the men that Obama listens to. He is very much a creature of the conventional wisdom, being devoid of any ideas or passions himself. The threat of genocide by Gaddafi did require a measured response. It required deep and careful thought. What it did not require is the bombs bursting in air and an unending commitment to yet another episode of Nation Building.
Don’t hold back, tell us what you really think.
Your first paragraph, spincitysd, is something I expected to see written over and over again back when I was trying to warn people that if they were going to embrace Barack Obama, at least know the man behind the mythmaking.
We should have never got involved in Libya, and Iraq also. Libya provides more importance to Europe than America. France, Britain, have oil stakes in the country. I feel horrible for the people in Libya that has to put up with a guy like Qadhafi, but people in that country have to want freedom and democracy including the military and loyalists to Qadhafi, in Egypt, the people rose up against their leader finally, and had enough. Its not easy, this country had to fight others countries for freedom, we was not always free, we even had a King at one time ourselves. I still can’t believe that Syrian government is basicly getting away with all the crimes they are doing to their own people. President Obamas reason for our intervention is in his own words a “humanitarian mission” when Syria, Bahrain, among others are brushed aside. Our foreign policy is taking another nose dive. I thought President Obama was the one that could bring our foreign policy back on the right track, boy was I ever wrong. Its not bad enough our domestic policy sucks, now to add on foreign policy.
Well, the bottom line is that McCain-Palin would have been *far* worse. Sad, but true.