It’s like the ghost of George W. Bush, but with smoother segues. …and so it begins:
Now is not the time to retreat from freedom’s rise.
[...] Yet at the same time, we know these revolutions can bring to power forces that are neither democratic nor forward-looking. Just as the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria and elsewhere see a chance for a better life of genuine freedom, the leaders of radical Islam see a chance to ride political turmoil into power.
The United States has a vital stake in the future of this region. We have been presented with a challenge as great as any we have faced in recent decades. And we must get it right. The question is, are we up to the challenge?
My answer is, of course we are. [...]
But President Obama has failed to formulate and carry out an effective and coherent strategy in response to these events. He has been timid, slow, and too often without a clear understanding of our interests or a clear commitment to our principles.
And parts of the Republican Party now seem to be trying to out-bid the Democrats in appealing to isolationist sentiments. This is no time for uncertain leadership in either party. [...]
There’s the obligatory chastising of Pres. Obama, because he’s mean to Israel:
In 2008, candidate Barack Obama told AIPAC that he would “always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel.” This year, he told AIPAC “we remain committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.” So I have to ask: are all the options still on the table or not? If he’s not clear with us, it’s no wonder that even our closest allies are confused.
The Administration should enforce all sanctions for which legal authority already exits. We should enact and then enforce new pending legislation which strengthens sanctions particularly against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who control much of the Iranian economy.
And in the middle of all this, is Israel.
Israel is unique in the region because of what it stands for and what it has accomplished. And it is unique in the threat it faces—the threat of annihilation. It has long been a bastion of democracy in a region of tyranny and violence.
Oh, and you’ll love the part on Syria. Mr. Pawlenty has a domino theory of sanctioning nations, with the U.S. providing Wilsonian intervention wherever needed.
The fall of the Assad mafia in Damascus would weaken Hamas, which is headquartered there. It would weaken Hezbollah, which gets its arms from Iran, through Syria. And it would weaken the Iranian regime itself.
You can likely imagine what the part on Palestinians reads like, but here’s the bottom line: It’s all the Palestinians’ fault.
When the Palestinians have leaders who are honest and capable, who appreciate the rule of law, who understand that war against Israel has doomed generations of Palestinians to lives of bitterness, violence, and poverty – then peace will come.
If you like your neoconservatism rebooted, T-Paw’s for you. A more accessible, well spoken George W. Bush, whose record at least shows a hint of competency.
Her experience in Cairo underscored the fact that female journalists often face a different kind of violence. While other forms of physical violence affecting journalists are widely covered — the traumatic brain injury ’suffered by the ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff in Iraq in 2006 was a front-page story at that time — sexual threats against women are rarely talked about within journalistic circles or in the news media.
With sexual violence, “you only have your word,” Ms. Logan said in the interview. “The physical wounds heal. You don’t carry around the evidence the way you would if you had lost your leg or your arm in Afghanistan.”
The account is harrowing, as we all knew it would be:
As the cameraman, Richard Butler, was swapping out a battery, Egyptian colleagues who were accompanying the camera crew heard men nearby talking about wanting to take Ms. Logan’s pants off. She said: “Our local people with us said, ‘We’ve gotta get out of here.’ That was literally the moment the mob set on me.”
Some things Ms. Logan wouldn’t talk about…
“What really struck me was how merciless they were. They really enjoyed my pain and suffering. It incited them to more violence.”
Egyptian soldiers and a group of citizens saved her from the wilding of the mob of men.
Logan has decided to steer clear of the Middle East, citing the very nature of her job, which is to communicate information, putting her in danger.
One of the other things that came crashing into her reality is the oppression of women in these countries. It should never be far from our consciousness.
Ms. Logan will tell more of her story Sunday on “60 Minutes.” It will be her only interview about the horror she experienced in Egypt’s Tahrir Square.
One reaction among liberals to the Bush years and to Iraq was to retreat from “idealism” toward “realism,” in which the United States would act cautiously and, above all, according to national interests rather than moral imperatives. The debate is rooted in the country’s early history. America, John Quincy Adams argued, “does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all,” but the “champion and vindicator only of her own. In 1966, Adams’s words were repeated by George Kennan, perhaps the most articulate realist of the twentieth century, in opposing the Vietnam War. …The use of force to stop human-rights abuses or to promote democracy, they argue, usually ends poorly.” – Ryan Lizza
Philosophically speaking, Lizza contends that whether a decision by a president is moral or right depends on the consequences of that action, which he concludes makes Pres. Obama’s evolving doctrine “consequentialist.” By that theory isn’t every president’s doctrine consequentialist by nature?
Oy, some experts…
Read it anyway, at least then you’ll understand Libya.
If there is such a thing in foreign policy as a “consequentialist” doctrine, Harry Truman might agree, though his interpretation of Lizza’s theory would be far different from Obama’s, because Truman believed the buck stopped in the White House. John F. Kennedy, a president who doesn’t resemble our current one at all, wouldn’t agree at all with Lizza, because imagining Kennedy bombing Libya requires enormous feats of mental acrobatics, regardless of the consequences.
Interesting premise pulled out of thin air to try to unwind whatever it is Pres. Obama is attempting to do on foreign policy, which is hardly clear at this point. Unfortunately, Obama’s actions also reveal timidity to declare U.S. intent, because admitting an altered U.S. policy based on Lizza’s “consequentialist” theory would cause political havoc for Obama in 2012.
From Lizza’s article:
Nonetheless, Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisers described the President’s actions in Libya as “leading from behind.” That’s not a slogan designed for signs at the 2012 Democratic Convention, but it does accurately describe the balance that Obama now seems to be finding. It’s a different definition of leadership than America is known for, and it comes from two unspoken beliefs: that the relative power of the U.S. is declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the U.S. is reviled in many parts of the world. Pursuing our interests and spreading our ideals thus requires stealth and modesty as well as military strength. “It’s so at odds with the John Wayne expectation for what America is in the world,” the adviser said. “But it’s necessary for shepherding us through this phase.” – The Consequentialist – How the Arab Spring remade Obama’s foreign policy.
Ah, China, but first America has to wean itself off of our Middle East obsession, which includes that we can create an outcome by anything we do. But the take away on this one is “leading from behind,” with the notion of a “humanitarian hawk” haunting U.S. foreign policy in a very real way, the latest in Libya, neoconservative unilateralism replaced with righteous certainty of America the savior in countries that are not of strategic interest, meanwhile we can do nothing in Bahrain, with sanctions on Syria coming in 3… 2… … .. 10… 9… 8… Oh, and just try to do anything in the Middle East by pissing off the Saudis.
On the structure – despite Lizza’s 9,000 words, and despite Obama’s stated intention to reorient American foreign policy to be less Middle East-focused, the essay…. is totally focused on the Middle East. I’m not saying that the Middle East is unimportant, but I’d have liked to have read something about how the Obama administration is dealing with the rest of the world. Indeed, Lizzaa notes that Obama visited South America during the opening days of the Libya operation precisely “to show that America has interests in the rest of the world.” Despite this effort, the thrust of the article demonstrates its futility during the start of a war. New military conflicts crowd out attention that should be paid to other arenas of foreign policy. It would have been nice to see how the administration’s strategy is playing/affecting the rest of the world.
The inside elite from Pontificate Hill, of which Ryan Lizza is certainly one on foreign policy, lays down that Obama is a consequentialist, which is really just shorthand for making stuff up as he goes along, moving from crisis to crisis with no guiding light, except outcome. Good God.
Brzezinski, too, has become disillusioned with the President. “I greatly admire his insights and understanding. I don’t think he really has a policy that’s implementing those insights and understandings. The rhetoric is always terribly imperative and categorical: ‘You must do this,’ ‘He must do that,’ ‘This is unacceptable.’ ” Brzezinski added, “He doesn’t strategize. He sermonizes.”
Then Mike Allen says Lizza’s is “West Wing Must Read,” which sends the message.
All it means to me is that if Lizza and Allen are correct we’re in bigger trouble than I thought we were and I didn’t think that was possible.
Decorah Eagle and Eaglet- see link below for livestream
Good morning and welcome to Sunday.
On this day in history, April 10, 1912, the ill-fated Titanic set out on it’s maiden voyage.
I’ve rounded up some news so you don’t have to:
~The GOP continues to put its thumb on the scales in favor of big business. Because, you know, if they don’t look out for those poor, beleaguered CEOs who will? On Friday House Republicans voted to overturn net neutrality rules. While they will have a harder time in the Senate and a Presidential veto would be likely, it raises the stakes in 2012. It’s become obvious that the GOP assault on “Big Government” is really a red herring to allow them to erode consumer protections while boosting corporate profits by getting rid of those meddlesome regulations which reign in corporate abuse.
~The situation in Gaza continues to worsen with dozens of rockets entering Israel and war planes over Gaza and some are worried that this could be the start of Cast Lead II. UPDATE: As of this morning, Israel has offered a cease-fire.
~An interesting opinion piece by the NYT’ Richard Cohen about Judge Goldstone’s Washington Post editorial from two weeks ago. While many are claiming that Judge Goldstone has done a total reversal, that view doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny and Goldstone himself has said he won’t seek to nullify the report. Cohen points out that Goldstone seems to misrepresent the findings of the independent report issued by Judge Mary McGowan Davis. To add to the confusion, Ynet published an article quoting the head of the South African Zionist Federation stating that intense pressure from South African Jewish groups played a role in Goldstone’s change of tone regarding his report. Regardless of one’s view of the report, the debate it provoked isn’t going away.
~Ok, so we have a nice, new, warm, fuzzy budget “compromise.” Or not. Here is one of the definitions of the word compromise: a settlement of differences by mutual concessions; an agreement reached by adjustment of conflicting or opposing claims, principles, etc., by reciprocal modification of demands. Is that what this budget deal was? Because other than pap smears and family planning, I’m not sure what the GOP compromised.
~Nick Kristof takes aim at the cowardice of the democrats during the budget debate and Paul Ryan’s refusal to take on the obvious need to end the Bush tax cuts.
~Saturday marked the 8th anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein. Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr and about ten thousand of his followers sent a message to the U.S. by warning that if the administration doesn’t stand by it’s December 2011 pull-out date then he will reactivate his army and target not only U.S. military, but civilians (ie. contractors and diplomats) who stay in the country. Well, we sure made things better there, didn’t we? But, as is always the case, timing is everything — Secretary Gates took a quiet trip to Iraq this week and essentially offered Iraq the option of requesting some U.S. troops stay beyond the December deadline. WTF?!?
By the way, the new U.S. embassy in Iraq is roughly the size of Vatican City, cost the U.S. taxpayers roughly $600 million, has gyms, a cinema, polls, it’s own electricity grids and water systems (when most Iraqis only have electricity for part of the day) and is a provocative symbol of American hubris and it has rubbed Iraqis the wrong way. Operating costs for the Embassy are expected to be around $1.2 billion a year. How big is the home for the U.S. Ambassador in Iraq? 16,000 square feet. Cozy. It will have a private security force (aka private contractor Army) of about 5,500. And did the construction of this monolith create American jobs? No, a Kuwaiti contracting firm oversaw the project.
~Even if you don’t click on a single link in this round-up, click on this. It’s a 24/7 live-stream of the Decorah Eagles taking care of their 3 brand new hatchlings in Iowa. I just checked in on them. Mom is watching them sleep, dad is off flying around (getting breakfast?)- she’s sitting on top of them to keep them warm. Every once in a while she stands up to check on them. When they are all awake they are too funny. That photo at the top of this post is of the Decorah Eagles.
~We simply cannot forget about Egypt. There has been escalating violence between protesters and the military in Tahrir Square and the Egyptian people seem to be turning against the military. This poses a problem for the U.S. government, which has been a bit too complimentary of the Egyptian military’s “restraint” and we have been awfully quiet about the allegations of torture, sexual abuse and other forms of violence perpetrated by the military and security forces.
~In case you missed it, Steve Clemons over at the Washington Note recently pointed out the total lack of discussion over the incredible cost of the Afghanistan War, particularly in light of the fact that Hamid Karzai and his buddies are funneling huge amounts of U.S. taxpayer dollars into offshore accounts almost as fast as the U.S. hands it over, while at the same time the U.S. builds Afghan infrastructure, schools etc. while neglecting those things here at home. How in the world can any politician have a serious debate about reigning in spending without a honest discussion about Afghanistan? To make matters worse, as we speak, the usual suspects [Gen. Petraeus, Gates, etc.] are lining up to blow sunshine up our backside by telling us something along the lines of “the surge is working, it’s a tough slog, but if we leave now we’ll lose whatever ground we’ve gained.” You know the deal-you’ve heard it before. Get used to it, we could be hearing it 20 years from now.
~It is becoming very clear that the situation in Cote d’Ivoire is long past a humanitarian crisis- bloodbath is more like it. In fact, it’s starting to look like a Rwanda-type situation. Human Rights Watch has reported mass killings and rape by President-elect Alassane Ouattara’s loyalists. The Obama administration has released several strongly-worded statements about the violence in Cote d’Ivoire over the past few weeks but given the growing number of atrocities taking place, I can’t help but have a hard time finding any consistency in President Obama’s foreign policy when it comes to humanitarian intervention, particularly in light of our actions in Libya.
~In yet another shift away from the values and themes he championed as a candidate in 2008, Obama’s reelection campaign will focus more on big-money donors unrestrained by spending limits, as opposed to focusing on the type of small donor, grassroots fund raising he bragged about in 2008.
~So how does the Côte d’Ivoire fit into the Obama administration’s claim that “we are not just going to sit back and watch a government slaughter their own people”? Whether one agrees or disagrees with our military engagement in Libya, I don’t think there is any denying that both liberals and conservatives are scratching their heads looking for some sort of over-arching foreign policy theme. Secretary Clinton called for Laurent Gbagbo to “step down immediately”- this is the strongest condemnation from the administration to date.
~Arianna Huffington announces what has been obvious for some time now- the HuffPo is not a progressive site anymore. I don’t know how I’d describe it- another corporate news experiment, shameless Search Engine Optimizer, ad revenue generator?
~Did the U.S. get Saudi and Bahraini support for military action in Libya by agreeing to not speak out against Saudi troops going into Bahrain to quash democracy protesters?
~If this is true then the military is moving pretty quickly on repealing DADT. That’s good because if the GOP makes more gains in 2012 (or should I say “when”), things could get tricky.
~Israeli President Shimon Peres will be in Washington this upcoming week to work with President Obama to try to find a way to prevent the UN from recognizing a Palestinian state in September. You know, because this conflict hasn’t gone on long enough, we want to draw it out a bit longer.
~Speaking of Israel and Palestine, the International Crisis Group (ICC)released a report last week that details the rise of extremism in Gaza and how it has been influenced, in part, by rival factions within Palestinian politics but also, notably, the Gaza blockade itself has not only not stemmed the militant tide in Gaza but may actually have increased it. We tend to view Palestinian politics through the lens of Hamas and Fatah but the report details the rise of Salafi-Jihadi groups who are more extremist than Hamas. Given that Hamas did not claim responsibility for the recent murder of the Fogel family and the bombing in Jerusalem, it is actually possible that they in fact weren’t responsible, but rather some of these more extremist groups were. The ICC argues that the situation in Gaza makes it more important than ever to reach a quick, just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict- in other words, the recent violence should not be seen as a reason to not make peace.
~The pointless, provocative burning of the Koran by that malcontent Pastor Jones in Florida continues to reverberate around the Muslim world, not just in Afghanistan. Some believe Afghan President Hamid Karzai may have added fuel to the fire on Thursday when he openly condemned the burning and called on the U.S. to arrest Jones. Then on Friday during morning prayers, various Imans and Mullahs urged people take action in response to the Koran burning, which clearly was taken to mean “do violence,” whether or not that was the original intent (and it may have been). It was on Friday that the worst violence took place, with nine killed and over 80 wounded at the United Nations headquarters in Afghanistan.
~Our attention has been diverted away from Egypt, but there is trouble brewing as this article makes clear. Pretty soon the U.S. is going to have to pressure the Egyptian military to stop the torture, detentions and repression that continues to take place to this day. The U.S. has a very close relationship with the Egyptian military and in my view, we’ve been giving them a bit too much credit for their “restraint” when in fact, the same repressive system that existed under Mubarak continues to hold [and abuse] power. It’s difficult to see them voluntarily giving up all the power and the perks that go along with military dictatorship.
~So, is the Capitulator In Chief going to allow the GOP another huge victory by agreeing to over $70 billion in budget cuts, much of it targeted at social programs and the usual stuff that the GOP hates. Naturally, the Defense Department gets a pass on this one. You know, because there is no waste, fraud and abuse there. Maybe Obama should stand up for something and allow the GOP to shut down the government? Oh wait, but he doesn’t stand for anything. Does Obama want to help the average middle class American or does he just want to be liked by the GOP and moderates? Because at this point, his military and economic policies are anything but “progressive” and they still can’t stand him. It’s time for Barack Obama to accept that no matter what he does, the GOP will say “no.” Apparently Obama thinks that “compromise” means giving the GOP almost everything they want and getting little to nothing in return. The compromising of late has been rather one-sided.
~Glenn Greenwald does a nice job illustrating why Obama is totally willing to take the progressive vote for granted- because some Obama supporters, just like the G.W. Bush supporters of yore, will rationalize everything Barack Obama does, even if they don’t agree with it. In another recent post, Glenn Greenwald exposes Obama’s hypocrisy and total about-face on the limits (or lackthereof) of Executive Power, particularly as it relates to war and national security.
~Senators have sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanding she insist the Palestinians cease their incitement against Jews and Israel in their media, schools etc. No argument there. Incitement by definition throws fuel on an already-smoldering file. But over at Foreign Policy, Mathew Berkman argues that BOTH Palestinians and Israelis should be urged to cease incitement and that Congress, and Israel, tend to have a double standard on this issue.
~Fox News lowers the bar. Again. They have given The Donald a regular Monday segment where he say outrageous things without having to explain them while promoting himself as a potential Presidential candidate. They are rationalizing that this ok because he’s not a paid contributor like some of their other Presidential candidates.
~Speaking of The Donald, Glenn Beck has…get this…dismissed Donald Trump as a “showboat” candidate. Hahahahaha. And what would Glenn know about showboating?
~More fun with Fox News- A Fox News executive admits he lied on air about candidate Obama during the 2008 election. Now, if this were any other “news” agency heads would roll. But this is Fox, a place where such biased nonsense is not only encouraged, but rewarded.
~The National Organization for Marriage is warning Virginians and whoever else that will listen, that pretty soon Virginia will have “mandatory gay adoptions” whatever the hell that means. Does that mean gay people will be mandated to adopt? Or does it mean straight people in Virginia will have to adopt gay people? Apparently what it actually means is that there shouldn’t be discrimination in the adoption process. The problem is that the religious right and anti-gay groups have mobilized around this issue and could tilt the balance against what appears to be an entirely reasonable regulation.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives for the funeral mass for former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, Thursday, March 31, 2011 in New York.
Morning, news junkies. Note: You’ll have to read all the way to the bottom of this one for the tie-in to “Jeannette” and “Perditta.” There’s also some comic relief from the Onion waiting there at the end as a reward for making it through. My Saturday reads are often on the ‘heavy’ side I know, and this weekend is no exception.
The article states:“Because mercenaries from Chad and Mali are presumed to be fighting for him [Gaddafi], the lives of a million African refugees and thousands of African migrants are at risk. A Turkish construction worker told the British radio station BBC: ‘We had seventy to eighty people from Chad working for our company. They were massacred with pruning shears and axes, accused by the attackers of being Gaddafi’s troops. The Sudanese people were massacred. We saw it for ourselves.’ ”
The zombie in place of the fourth estate, our corporate US media, has either glossed over or omitted the massacre altogether. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera, unsurprisingly, has had more to say on the killings than I’ve seen from CNN or Fox over the last few months combined. Again, from the WSWS link:
On February 28, the Arab TV station Al Jazeera reported the racist massacre of black African workers by so-called “freedom fighters” as follows: “Dozens of workers from sub-Saharan Africa, it is feared, have been killed and hundreds are hiding because angry opponents of the government are hunting down black African mercenaries, witnesses reported…. According to official reports, about 90 Kenyans and 64 people from southern Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Zambia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and Burundi landed in Nairobi today.
One of them, Julius Kiluu, a 60-year-old construction manager, told Reuters: ‘We were attacked by people from the village. They accused us of being murderous mercenaries. But in reality they simply refuse to tolerate us. Our camp was burnt down. Our company and our embassy helped us get to the airport.’“Hundreds of black immigrants from the poorest African countries, who work mainly as low-wage day labourers in Libya, have been wounded by the rebels. From fear of being killed, some of them have refrained from going to a doctor.”
“But why is nobody concerned about the plight of sub-Saharan African migrants in Libya? As victims of racism and ruthless exploitation, they are Libya’s most vulnerable immigrant population, and their home country governments do not give them any support,” Hein de Haas, a senior fellow with the International Migration Institute, writes in his blog.
Even Al-Jazeera TV has based most of its news coverage of bands of marauding savage Africans on information posted via tweeter, facebook, and other social networks. That there may be African mercenaries operating in Libya is very possible but there are also credible reports from Serbian military sources as well as other Western agencies that Serbian mercenaries are fighting to protect Muammar Gaddafi. Yet nothing has been said about Gaddafi’s Serbian and Russian mercenaries.
Black Africans have always been a ‘visible’ and persecuted minority in Libya. By giving credence to potentially dangerous and unverified reports and rumours posted on social networks without taking into consideration the racial context of Libyan society Al-Jazeera and other foreign media outlets are complicit in the latest vilification and scapegoating of Libya’s Black minorities and its African migrant workers.
I don’t claim to be an expert on what’s happening on the ground in Libya, but I would like some answers on the deaths of these migrant workers. I would really love to hear someone put this humanitarian issue to Madame President Hillary Clinton for comment.
Switching gears now… because yep, you heard me correctly…
I just called her Madame President Hillary Clinton.
Nothing new there, of course, except for the part about everyone knowing it. If Obama is the Where’s Waldo president, our media was the Where’s Waldo fourth estate in 2008, as well as during the entire past decade. That Where’s Waldo media, by the way, very much included left blogistan, guilty of its own version of the “Village” insularity and hegemony in the traditional media that the prog blogs cut their teeth railing against.
In 2008, access was more important than our country’s future to journalists and bloggers, and I have no reason to believe in 2012, the story will be any different.
Pres. Obama was forced political to speak tonight. It’s the last thing he wanted to do. His Saturday address gives you the foundation on where he’s likely to begin tonight. What he won’t say is that without sustained military efforts the Libyan “rebels,” the make up of which we haven’t a clue, won’t last.
The good news for Pres. Obama as he prepares to talk to we the people is that U.S. military actions have pushed the rebels to a better position, something they could not have come close to doing on their own. But the news that NATO has taken control of Obama’s war of choice in Libya quickly transitioning to them all aspects of the war is a huge help to Pres. Obama.
Unfortunately, because Obama entered into a misadventure not in U.S. vital interests he’s got some real challenges ahead, which he he won’t be able to answer tonight.
For instance, what’s next?
Pres. Obama stated “Gadhafi must go,” but in the same breath, as is seen in the video above, says he started a war with Libya on humanitarian reasons. You can’t reconcile these two objectives, neither of which were in consultation of Congress, though that’s hardly anything new.
Congress has become a neutered, not equal branch of government, so it’s never any sweat for a president to ignore them.
The other real problem is that it’s clear Pres. Obama, Sec. Clinton, Dr. Rice and Samantha Power, the pro-Libya war crowd, hasn’t thought through who would replace Gadhafi when he’s ousted.
That looming question has the potential of destabilizing a region, but also derailing Egypt’s progress, far more than what Gadhafi threatened to do to his own people.
Thousands of North Koreans starve, with girls in China being killed for years simply because they are not boys, so I find the Obama-Clinton pro-Libya axis unconvincing when it comes to the ultimate goals of what we’re doing in Libya, but also our overall foreign policy strategy that has now become incoherent.
Our military is also once again being stretched to breaking, with families expected to always give more for other nations, which when not in our strategic interests is an unconscionable thing to ask and beyond what they signed up to do.
I don’t think Pres. Obama will come close tonight to explaining what comes after the humanitarian crisis he went in on ends, because he didn’t map it out before he ordered the U.S. military into action.
Vision isn’t his thing.
UPDATE:From the New Yorker: “they have perhaps only a thousand trained fighters.”
Pres. Obama letting emotions be his guide is how we got into Libya. It’s also the leading reasoning behind others who back him.
Juan Cole has a post up today “unabashedly cheering the liberation movement on”, applauding Pres. Obama’s interventionism into Libya, his war of choice. As much as I respect Juan Cole, his arguments are unpersuasive, as he cherry picks his way through rationalizing the President’s actions.
The United Nations Security Council authorization for UN member states to intervene to forestall this massacre thus pitched the question. If the Left opposed intervention, it de facto acquiesced in Qaddafi’s destruction of a movement embodying the aspirations of most of Libya’s workers and poor, along with large numbers of white collar middle class people. Qaddafi would have reestablished himself, with the liberation movement squashed like a bug and the country put back under secret police rule. The implications of a resurgent, angry and wounded Mad Dog, his coffers filled with oil billions, for the democracy movements on either side of Libya, in Egypt and Tunisia, could well have been pernicious. [...]
Among reasons given by critics for rejecting the intervention are:
1. Absolute pacifism (the use of force is always wrong)
2. Absolute anti-imperialism (all interventions in world affairs by outsiders are wrong).
3. Anti-military pragmatism: a belief that no social problems can ever usefully be resolved by use of military force.
For a man who has called Afghanistan another Vietnam, while never understanding the human rights as women’s rights argument, it’s astounding Cole is ignoring a major element on Libya. One that has convinced me that we’ve done what we can in Afghanistan and while we’ll continue to aid them, our military must disengage.
There is absolutely nothing about Libya that is in American’s geopolitical interests.
Cole’s flippant refusal to consider the Sudan because military intervention would have required more effort than Libya is to say that preventing genocide can only be done if it’s easy. Genocide often happens in out of the reach places where the perpetrators think they can get away with it, as they did in Rwanda.
The other very real issue is focus and what taking our eye off of the geopolitical ball can mean. Distractions are dangerous and that’s exactly what Libya is.
From Steve Clemons, who is correct on Libya and has the most cogent analysis of anyone:
However, the nation of real rather than imagined national security consequence to the U.S. in the region is Egypt. Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations and others — including myself — are worried about the ‘bandwidth’ of the White House to deal with multiple major challenges at the same time. Libya will soon be NATO protectorate and focus of significant attention — adding some ‘stretch marks’ to the stress NATO members are already feeling on Afghanistan.
But what of Egypt which is going through extraordinary changes in turbo time? Senior officials in the Department of State tell me “we are on it.” And I believe they are in the sense of working with Egyptian authorities to offer counsel on strategies to transform the Constitution and set the terms for significantly broader political stakeholding in the country — but there is no doubt that the system that President Obama has established for exhaustively internally inclusive national security decision making has less space for Egypt today than Libya.
Clinton said the elements that led to intervention in Libya — international condemnation, an Arab League call for action, a United Nations Security Council resolution — are “not going to happen” with Syria, in part because members of the U.S. Congress from both parties say they believe Assad is “a reformer.”
Leaving aside for now the absurd notion that Pres. Assad is a “reformer,” I cannot find any through line from the Administration on why Libya and not Syria.
Sen. Joe Lieberman did and it reveals the problem in Juan Cole’s analysis, which opens up a whole can of worms. Via Reuters:
Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent, suggested the United States and other countries could intervene militarily in Syria if President Bashar al-Assad, who came to power after the 2000 death of his father, Hafez, attacked protesters with greater ferocity.
“There’s a precedent now that the world community has said in Libya, and it’s the right one, ‘we’re not going to stand by and allow this Assad to slaughter his people like his father did years ago,’” Lieberman told the “Fox News Sunday” program.
Of course we feel for the poor and workers of Libya. If Gadhafi had been allowed to clash with protesting Libyan civilians it would have been gut wrenching to watch.
But what about human rights violations in China? In North Korea?
If the U.S. is spread any thinner our national security interests will become vulnerable, our interests unprotected, because we will now be embroiled in Libya, along with Afghanistan and Iraq. While Egypt, which is much more critical to American interests than Libya, will not get the attention it warrants.
It’s being reported that NATO will indeed take on duties beyond the no-fly zone, arms embargo, but also protecting civilians. But NATO’s “Needs America To Operate” history means we won’t be completely hands off, because this mission is not over. Never mind we still do not know the ultimate intent, which Obama states is “Gadhafi must go,” while admitting he has no intention of forcing the issue.
The entire endeavor has been fraught with inconsistensies from the start.
Juan Cole is understandably emotional about Libya, which is how Pres. Obama got dragged into this war of choice in the first place.
There are many tensions breaking open and what’s required right now is clear, tough-eyed realism. Bleeding hearts will compromise American interests and get us embroiled while our adversaries plot.
Some commentators love the Libya war; others hate it. But most agree that it’s profoundly unnatural that we were pushed into it by… France. Welcome to the post-American world. In the age we’re entering, most of the time, the choice will no longer be between humanitarian interventions controlled by the United States and humanitarian interventions where other nations take the lead. The choice will be between humanitarian interventions where other nations take the lead and no humanitarian interventions at all. – Peter Beinert
Pres. Obama is walking away from what Pres. Bill Clinton believed about the U.S. in foreign affairs. That we are the indispensable nation. In the year of the Arab Spring, that’s simply so ’90s.
This is what’s causing Republican heads to explode, with GOP presidential wannabes seeing this as their opening.
Rarely agreeing with Mr. Beinert, what he writes about today is the most important aspect of what’s going on over Libya, as Arab uprisings continue to spread and unwind.
He also has the most classic analysis of Gates since he uttered his own “on the fly” description of Obama’s war of choice in Libya.
I don’t know what it took to convince an obviously reluctant Robert Gates to permit American involvement in the Libyan no-fly zone, but it’s a reasonable bet that had Barack Obama not been able to promise that it would be a mostly European affair, Gates would now be a military analyst on Fox News. It’s not the 1990s anymore. The American public’s appetite for humanitarian war has always been meager. And now the American government’s capacity for waging it is meager, too.
Old school Republicans like Haley Barbour, Mitt Romney and to a lesser degree Newt Gingrich, as well as Sarah Palin, who simply doesn’t have the depth of foreign policy knowledge or study to do anything but parrot neoconservative ideology, are all caterwauling about Pres. Obama’s alleged lack of leadership. The problem with Newt’s fumbling analysis is that it reveals he’s absolutely paralyzed with fear at being humiliated in his quest for the Republican nomination, which seems baked into the plot. With Romney willing to say whatever it takes to nab the nomination this time around. The others simply refuse Obama’s premise.
Obama’s incoherence on Libya, especially Pres. Obama’s arrogant slight of Congress, is unquestionable. Sending Sec. Clinton out to do his job hardly puts to rest the argument that the women guided him into Libya, in fact it reinforces it. No doubt he’ll be center stage whenever this ill fated foreign policy misadventure concludes, taking credit, of course.
But Pres. Obama is attempting to transition the United States into a more humble foreign policy based on practicalities, not the least of which is our terrifying fiscal insolvency, even if Obama’s own mathematical solutions are as bad as Republican.
As impossibly scatterbrained as the Obama administration’s foreign policy is, looking at Republicans and their regurgitation of 20th century national security talking points that long outlived reality, is enough to scare anyone to death. Not only are they clueless about the emerging Arab world, but these fiscal numbskulls can’t even swallow that our means of making war can’t ever be again to deploy tens of thousands of troops. Modern warfare nimbleness hasn’t cracked their thick skulls yet.
But then Pres. Obama’s own stubbornness on Afghanistan is just as bad.
Beinert’s analysis of Europe is also noteworthy, as it’s the bookend change to what’s exploding in Arab nations. Part of it is due to Europe’s own experiences of war on their own soil, something America hasn’t faced. We still see bombs as flowers to people in countries we are invading to “save” for freedom, while European nations focus on the human carnage war making manifests.
Jeffersonianism has landed in Washington, which is why Obama’s taking such a hit politically.
Which leads us back to Beinert: Jeffersonians, to borrow Walter Russell Mead’s phrase, believe that preserving America’s economic and political solvency requires reining in American empire.
Ah, but countries have egos. The Republicans want to continue feeding ours, while Pres. Obama is trying to starve it.
If Pres. Obama wasn’t delivering confusion and chaos through his clumsy transition to America sharing the world’s stage with France and the rest of Europe, instead of making the case directly, which is a good one, the American people just might buy it.
“Is this the face of a terrorist?” asks the American poster for Julian Schnabel’s new film, Miral, about a young Palestinian woman of the same name. Dressed as a schoolgirl, looking ten years younger than her actual age of 26, Freida Pinto stares back, the sullenness in her eyes a residue of shouldering the twin burdens of adolescence and occupation at once. – ‘Miral’: Taking the Israel-Palestine Conflict Personally
A film about a young girl’s coming of age is causing quite a storm juxtaposed against world news of an Arab spring, as rockets fly between Gaza and Israel.
Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren has been on something of a media blitz recently, seen on Bill Maher’s show last week, today speaking with Chuck Todd, because opinion of Israel remains problematic in Europe, according to a March BBC poll. That’s because, for one thing, people are exhausted with Israel’s continuing claim, as Oren pressed recently, that they are ready to deal any time, but it’s all the Palestinian’s fault. At this point everyone believes both parties are being hopelessly unpractical, which in the end hurts Israel far more, if only based on demographics.
The other issue for Israel is that relying on neoconservatives is no longer working for them in the court of public opinion. From a guest post over at Pat Lang’s place(h/t Mondoweiss):
In relation to declining support in the West, Israel and its external supporters commonly talk about delegitimation, as though this decline reflected the malign efforts of people implacably hostile to the very idea of a Jewish state. But in relation to my own country, Britain, this is delusional. The decline of support for Israel simply does not reflect cunning propaganda from Palestinian advocates – whose efforts, taken in themselves, resonate among rather limited sections of the population. It is the actions and words of successive Israeli governments and their supporters in this country and in the United States which have shifted sympathy away from the country.
Coming together with the revelations in the ‘Palestine Papers’ in January about the extraordinary lengths to which Palestinian leaders were prepared to go to accommodate Netanyahu’s predecessors, the conclusion is increasingly being drawn that there is no Israeli ‘partner for peace’. And indeed, people have increasingly been asking themselves whether they have been deluding themselves, and failing to recognise that the continuation of the settlement of the West Bank throughout the period since the 1993 Oslo Accords meant that the whole ‘peace process’ has been misconceived.
In Britain, this scepticism has been moving into the journalistic mainstream. At the time of Obama’s attempts to resuscitate the ‘peace process’ last August, the international affairs editor of the Financial Times, David Gardner, published an article entitled ‘A poisoned process holds little hope.’ Having pointed to the ‘relentless and strategic Israeli colonisation of occupied Palestinian land’ as the fundamental problem vitiating the ‘peace process’, and he went on to remark…
PM Netanyahu, who just met with SecDef Gates, told him that Israel is prepared to act with “great force” to the spreading of violence that is now hitting Israeli – Palestinian regions. From AFP:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Friday that Israel is ready to act with “great force” in response to a spate of rocket fire by Gaza militants and a deadly bus bombing in Jerusalem.
Israel had been “subjected to bouts of terror and rocket attacks,” Netanyahu told reporters before going into a meeting with Gates.
“We stand ready to act with great force and great determination to put a stop to it,” he added, with police saying Israel had not been hit by any projectiles Friday morning.
Netanyahu said he had received a “very warm” telephone call from US President Barack Obama on Thursday expressing his condolences after the latest flare-up in violence.
“Any civilised society will not tolerate such wanton attacks on its civilians,” he said.
Israeli nationalism is keeping Netanyahu and Mr. Oren, however well intentioned their efforts, from seeing the reality sitting in front of their great country. It makes you wonder if these two men are too preoccupied with the past to watch what’s unfolding in the present on Al Jazeera.
Sarkozy’s stamp on the conflict has been unmistakable. Cable news in the U.S. on Monday featured the celebrity philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, an unexpected Sarkozy ally, barking praise for the French president at a CNN anchor and elated Libyan opposition fighters shouting, “Merci, Sarkozy.” And Sarkozy was indeed a central force in goading the world to act. “Sarkozy has a huge investment in seeing Qadhafi go,” said Justin Vaisse, the director of research for the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings in Washington. “He’s going to be a constant force in favor of hardening the stance and the action.” – Nicolas Sarkozy’s war, by Ben Smith
Intelligence from people on the ground reveals there really isn’t a good reason for Pres. Obama to have engaged in the Libya no-fly zone. While Ms. Maddow was correctly slamming the Right’s Sen. Lindsay Graham and others, as well as the notion of impeachment that was always a non-starter, her purpose of pushing the marketing aspect of Obama’s reluctance, as well as his smaller U.S. foot print, didn’t hold up for very long. It hardly matters what’s being said as the U.S. pounds Libya with $1 billion worth of armament not surprising in the end, while also stating we’re getting ready to go and that Gadhafi has to, too.
The Democratic support for Obama on Libya is well-meaning, of that I have no doubt. But it’s sorely out of step with reality, which John Judis proves accidentally, especially when you consider Obama’s inaction on Iran in ’09, Egypt, not to mention what’s happening in Bahrain, which forces the U.S. to be on the side against the people looking for freedom, because of national interests. When you look at Syria exploding and Yemen as well, if this is our policy, our no-fly efforts look like the beginnings of interminable interventionism. That’s not going to happen, so Pres. Obama’s reasoning quickly starts to collapse.
Richard Engel provided the proof that U.S. intelligence on Libya was not only scant but non-existent, which could prove dangerously embarrassing for the American President if Obama doesn’t extricate our military quickly and even then questions will ultimately linger. When Maddow asked Engel what kind of impact the strikes were having on Gadhafi’s forces, saying the “declared strategy” was to “make things safe enough for the rebels that they can win on their own,” Engel revealed the intelligence chasm the U.S. is operating under.
“Ooh, that’s going to be a tough one. These rebels are, they’re divided into two groups. They’re the volunteers and these rebels have really no military experience, very little sophistication, very little education. A lot of bravado, but when the actual fighting happens most of them run away. We were with rebels today who didn’t know how to load their weapons. They were dropping rounds of ammunition on the ground. A lot of them are fighting for weird conspiracy theories. I would say 1 in 5 of the rebels told me today that they’re fighting because they think Gadhafi is Jewish. …The other of the rebels is people, units that have defected from Gadhafi’s army and if we’re waiting for these defected units to go and suddenly storm the front lines I think we’re going to be waiting a little bit longer. I went looking for one of the top commanders here in Tobruk, actually the top commander in Tobruk and we went to the military base and we knocked on the door. He’s decided to take the day off. And I was shocked at that. You would think if the U.S. military had just joined your revolution after two plus days that this wouldn’t be the time to go home and spend some time with the family.
“Unbelievable,” Ms. Maddow responded. Indeed.
Unlike Egypt or even Iran’s Green uprising in ’09, both of which Pres. Obama and his administration sat back and watched unfold, at first even backing Mubarak, after initial deliberative reticence Pres. Obama jumped in to have the U.S. military lead the way on the no-fly zone on Libya, obviously unaware the composition of the rebels U.S. firepower was protecting. Huffington Post’s David Wood revealed this early on, with some of them “anti-American extremists.”
The reasoning Obama intervened was on humanitarian grounds, with U.S. foreign policy rarely if ever having a consistent strategy on what constitutes this reality. Pres. Obama answered questions on Libya, but even he went ’round in circles, talking about limited military actions, along with “Gadhafi’s got to go” as policy, which isn’t regime change. It was… um… nuts.
And as hard as the White House is pushing back on the women inside the Obama administration having a leading role on Libya, which quite a few males in the media have channeled, there is absolutely nothing that convinces me that the strong diplomatic work of Sec. Clinton, with Dr. Rice’s lead at the U.N. to muscle abstentions instead of objections, aided significantly by Samantha Power and her history of influence on Barack Obama, didn’t play a lead role in guiding the Administration to where Obama landed. The notion that these women have to be in the room when the decision is actually made to have led the argument to strike in Libya is preposterous. But the White House doesn’t like the meme, so tapping political writers to push back by giving them access isn’t surprising as a counter narrative.
Neera Tanden, former policy director for Senator Clinton and now COO of Center for American Progress, tried again today on MSNBC to make the Democratic argument for humanitarian intervention. Keep in mind that the threats to civilians in Benghazi have been mitigated already, which Tanden admitted, so she was forced to dance on the head of Obama’s diplomatic pin to keep from talking about “regime change,” something from which Arab allies would recoil. There is no tape, but this is a good transcript I did myself:
“Look, we have a humanitarian crisis and that is what has sponsored this incredible outgrowth of international support to our Arab allies. And so I think what’s holding this coalition together is really strong support for stopping a madman from literally killing and slaughtering his own people. And that objective is actually being achieved as we speak. Benghazi was on the throes of being overrun and that was stopped in its tracks. I think we can debate ultimate goals… ..” – Neera Tanden, COO Center for American Progress
The “ultimate goals” of Pres. Obama lie somewhere between “Gadhafi’s got to go” and humanitarianism, the latter having already been achieved.
This is where France’s Pres. Sarkozy comes in, because going back years his “brain child,” if you will, has been the creation of an economic and political Mediterranean Union comprised of Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Morocco, Palestine, Portugal, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey, which is supposed to “bridge Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.”(Bernard-Henri Levy mentioned this last night on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show.) Sarkozy has a reason for leading the no-fly zone mission, even if he doesn’t have the military to begin it, so the importance of Pres. Obama handing off to him is critical.
The problem then becomes political for Obama, because the humanitarian aspect of the Libyan question was far away from any genocide standard, with “Gadhafi must go” a preference but simply not in America’s vital interests, because no one has a fricking clue what would replace him. The confusion of the mission coupled with the real leader being France, because of Sarkozy’s goal, is something that’s very hard to explain to a United States audience that expects America to be out front on every mission even if it’s not in our interest to do so.
Sen. Lindsay Graham helps this storyline by expecting Pres. Obama to make this no-fly effort a mission it simply is not, with the U.S. having absolutely no business attempting regime change. The Arab League backing the initial no-fly effort would freak if that’s what this morphed into, but Obama’s been his own worst enemy on this aspect.
Somewhere between Richard Engel’s reporting, which shows absolutely no fervor, let alone organization, from Libyan rebels close to Iran in ’09 and certainly not Egypt’s organized uprising, and our military interventionism, which is in Sarkozy’s personal interest, Obama’s foreign doctrine is being revealed as haphazardly incoherent.
It’s positively depressing to be a liberal and watch this national security insanity unfold.
That’s why you have experts like Steve Clemons going on Rachel Maddow and other shows carefully tiptoeing around what’s unfolding and trying mightily not to be critical of Pres. Obama, while simultaneously saying the whole effort is worrisome.
So, in the first two segments of her show as Ms. Maddow tried to separate Pres. Obama from his presidential predecessors, while also attempting to show him as a reluctant warrior, even as he ordered the U.S. military-led bombings to continue, everything fell apart. Because her guests provided evidence that regardless of Obama trying to go about his day job in a business as usual manner, keeping his South American job outreach on schedule, the rationale for authorizing military strikes unraveled before Maddow’s audiences’ eyes, with neither Richard Engel or Steve Clemons helping her case at all. Engel even suggestrf he might should be somewhere else since things in Yemen and surrounding areas were really catching fire.
Rachel Maddow is as good as they get on issues, but she and other Obama allies are really being put to the test on Libya. It’s not turning out very well so far.
The Pentagon says 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles have been launched from U.S. and British ships in the Mediterranean, hitting more than 20 Libyan targets along the Mediterranean coastline. Navy Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, told reporters the Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from one British submarine and a number of American destroyers and subs. He said the success of the mission was not immediately clear, adding that additional attacks would commence later. – Qaddafi’s Air Defenses ‘Severely Disabled’ Following Military Strikes
Never having fallen for what Ann Althouse writes about today, I don’t find it remotely surprising that it’s women who guided Pres. Obama to act in Libya. Some of you might remember this column. It’s not the first time women have channeled the masculine on foreign policy, because there has yet to be a convincing competing narrative created by any woman. Is it because on war and peace gender doesn’t apply? If anything, it’s Pres. Obama who has offered the feminine side of the equation so far.
In a Paris hotel room on Monday night, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton found herself juggling the inconsistencies of American foreign policy in a turbulent Middle East. She criticized the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates for sending troops to quash protests in Bahrain even as she pressed him to send planes to intervene in Libya.
Only the day before, Mrs. Clinton — along with her boss, President Obama — was a skeptic on whether the United States should take military action in Libya. But that night, with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces turning back the rebellion that threatened his rule, Mrs. Clinton changed course, forming an unlikely alliance with a handful of top administration aides who had been arguing for intervention.
[...] The shift in the administration’s position — from strong words against Libya to action — was forced largely by the events beyond its control: the crumbling of the uprising raised the prospect that Colonel Qaddafi would remain in power to kill “many thousands,” as Mr. Obama said at the White House on Friday.
The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret.
Now, the three women were pushing for American intervention to stop a looming humanitarian catastrophe in Libya. [...]
This is the same type of action that helped kick Hillary Rodham Clinton off the presidential path, regardless of the reality that Sen. Barack Obama had virtually the same voting record on matters of war and peace as Sen. Clinton, minus his ducking out on a measure on Iran where he couldn’t get away with voting “present,” which has been his problem the past few weeks as well.
As much as I wanted and applaud Pres. Obama for waiting for word from the Arab League and the UNSC, both of which finally came, I am astounded at the lack of consideration on who is going to pay for the military action Clinton, Rice and Power wanted, and Obama now backs.
Let me also ask a question no one seems to be asking: Where the hell are the Saudis and the Egyptians? The Saudis have a fierce fighting force, with Obama having completed the largest sale in U.S. history to them last fall, $60 billion, and we give Egypt $1.3 billion a year. So why is the U.S. so willing to foot the bill for a military action that isn’t in America’s vital interests no matter how you look at it?
Trying to salve the wounds of past mistakes doesn’t make what’s happening in Libya “genocide.” It’s a civil war citizens of Libya are waging against their leader, which however excruciating to watch isn’t any of our business.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Iran on Saturday to stop meddling in Bahrain and other Arab states in the Persian Gulf, but also called on the kingdom’s leaders not to use force against anti-government protesters.
Clinton said the United States “has an abiding commitment to Gulf security” and that “a top priority is working together with our partners on our shared concerns about Iranian behavior in the region.”
“We share the view that Iran’s activities in the Gulf, including its efforts to advance its agenda in neighboring countries, undermines peace and stability,” she told reporters after an international conference on the crisis in Libya. At that meeting, she met with numerous Arab officials who complained that Iran was fomenting unrest Bahrain and elsewhere.
Bahrain’s Sunni minority monarchy is facing growing opposition from the Shiite-majority population and has called in security forces from neighboring Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to deal with escalating protests.
[...] The Gulf force underscores the deep worries about Bahrain’s stability among the region’s Sunni kings and sheiks. They fear any stumble by Bahrain’s leaders could embolden more challenges to their own regimes and possibly open room for Shiite heavyweight Iran to make political inroads.
The U.S., which counts Bahrain as a centerpiece of its Gulf military framework, has sent top envoys to meet with the embattled monarchy and has been criticized by Shiite opposition groups for not coming to their support.
And where the hell is Congress where Libya is concerned? Did we learn nothing from preemptive war in Iraq?
Once again, this time goaded by females, Pres. Obama is unleashing the winds of war without thinking through the exercise completely, even if cautious deliberation is where he began. It does, however, give more proof that if he was in the Senate at the same time as Clinton Obama would have very likely joined the other presidential hopefuls in wanting to oust Saddam Hussein.
Obama’s declaration was stunning:
“Left untouched,” Obama said, “we have every reason to believe Gadhafi would commit atrocities against his people.” – USA Today
That’s our military foreign policy standard? Hardly, because it sure as hell didn’t apply in Darfur.
Pres. Obama, after being correct to wait, is now sounding astoundingly hypocritical.
American politicians have proven their bankruptcy once again through talking about military intervention as the U.S. economy sputters, austerity talks continue, entitlements suggested for targeting, with the U.S. military budget and our policies never being included in the reality scenarios.
You cannot talk about cutting entitlements while sanctioning military action in the Arab world and not also demand the Saudis and Egyptian government step in to use their massive military might, which we’ve made possible.
As for the women who continue to lead like men, I’ve written about it many times before, so none of this surprises me at all. Perhaps that’s why a woman has never been elected president, because no female has ever offered an alternative vision for the world and what it would mean for America in terms of war and peace.
That Pres. Obama has gone from deliberative and waiting for Arab nations and the world to join in, while not demanding more in the war of financial participation, as he also shrugs off Congress, reveals anything but “change we can believe in.”
UPDATE 3: Pres. Obama has announced no ground troops will be sent to Libya. So, time to revisit Gen. Wesley Clark’s warning this past week, “Libya isn’t worth the risk.” Clark remembers words that then Pres. Clinton said at the time, with there being a huge difference, part of which I mentioned today:
In 1999, when we launched the NATO air campaign against Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, President Bill Clinton had to state publicly that he didn’t intend to use ground troops. He did so in an effort to limit the costs of an initiative that the public and Congress did not consider to be in our nation’s vital interest. The administration and I, as the NATO commander in Europe, were in a difficult position, and Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic knew it. But what Milosevic didn’t understand was that once we began the strikes — with NATO troops deployed in neighboring countries and the Dayton Peace Agreement to enforce in Bosnia — NATO couldn’t afford to lose. And the United States had a vital interest in NATO’s success, even if we had a less-than-vital interest in Kosovo.
[...] It is hard to stand by as innocent people are caught up in violence, but that’s what we did when civil wars in Africa killed several million and when fighting in Darfur killed hundreds of thousands…
An article circulating today has one kernel of truth, though I can’t vouch for the rest of it. It revisits Pres. Obama’s performance last weekend from the Gridiron dinner. Great marketing stunt from Murdoch’s minions over at The Daily.
In “Oh, Hill No” comes this bit of stand-up from Pres. Obama, which refers to Clinton’s feelings about the Libyan rebels:
“I’ve dispatched Hillary to the Middle East to talk about how these countries can transition to new leaders — though, I’ve got to be honest, she’s gotten a little passionate about the subject,” Obama said to laughter from the audience.
“These past few weeks it’s been tough falling asleep with Hillary out there on Pennsylvania Avenue shouting, throwing rocks at the window.”
There is something vaguely insulting and condescending when Pres. Obama makes these types of remarks, crafting a picture of Clinton outside his presidential window trying to get his attention in the dead of night. It reflects a callousness of a Cabinet member that’s been a hallmark of Obama’s general disrespect for serious members of his Administration who are diligently enforcing his policies. It also reveals why Bill Daley is trying to reach out to repair relations with Obama’s Cabinet, because the boss can’t be bothered.
Now, Hillary Clinton is a great sport and I doubt she gave a shit one way or another. But that’s not really the point.
It did, however, give an excuse for people to impart more from Clinton’s interview with Wolf Blitzer, which is exactly what the article was supposed to do in order to get people linking and talking about the story. Philippe Reines is quoted as saying “He asked, she answered. Really that simple. [It] wasn’t a declaration.” That’s absolutely true and the interview style was pure Clinton, especially at a point in her State gig when she’s looking to wrap it up.
The fact is Sec. Clinton got stung when she went out on a limb for Mubarak to state his government was “stable,” siding with a long time friend and ally of the Clintons that goes back to her husband’s Administration. What made matters worse is that when she first got to Egypt this week, a group of young Egyptians refused to meet with her because of it.
There is no secret that Clinton is more hard-nosed when it comes to foreign policy. She’s also decisive and knows her mind, as well as not being afraid to stick her neck out. That also makes her part of the group of foreign policy leaders who has a very different view of American presence in the world, which is involvement versus Obama’s standoffishness, which is getting quite a bit of criticism as the events in the Mideast expand outward.
But Clinton’s attitude likely has nothing to do with the fact that “she’s not happy with dealing with a president who can’t decide if today is Tuesday or Wednesday, who can’t make his mind up.” Sounds to me like someone in Hillaryland is a bit upset with Obama, which doesn’t mean Hillary is or would say so to anyone other than the people closest to her, someone like Cheryl Mills who would never utter a peep, let alone give the story to Murdoch’s people.
To put a finer point on it, The Daily’s article is loaded with the typical drivel that reminds me of what happened during the ’08 campaign when Clinton insiders couldn’t keep their mouths shut, with leaks blowing sky high every time Hillary turned around, causing her campaign to look like a bunch of amateurs, which didn’t do much for Clinton’s leadership quotient either. The “Clinton insider” The Daily talked to didn’t even know the difference between “Secretaries of State” and “Secretary of States,” the latter causing Murdoch’s people to have to issue a correction or maybe it’s Murdoch’s writer who is clueless.
Because in case you weren’t paying attention, Pres. Obama did make up his mind and he said he wasn’t doing anything in Libya unless the international community led the way. People didn’t like that, with events unfolding from there, including the Arab League asking for a no-fly zone, which is exactly what Obama was asserting needed to happen, with the U.N. voting to authorized strikes in Libya today.
The United States, originally leery of any military involvement in Libya, became a strong proponent of the resolution, particularly after the Arab League approved a no-fly zone, something that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called a “game changer.” – U.N. Approves Airstrikes to Halt Attacks by Qaddafi Forces
It may be too late for some, but the U.S. playing global cop is the neoconservative and Rush Limbaugh way, not Obama’s. Of course, it’s put David Gergen off his chocolate Ensure, but those are the breaks.
What is inspiring Sec. Hillary Rodham Clinton to head for the door come 2012 is that she’s tired of the exhausting travel that would kick anyone’s ass over time.
As for the “She wants to be a grandmother more than anything” line, it’s pure 20th century Rupert Murdoch “Page 6″ misogyny. As if Hillary Rodham Clinton can’t play grandmother and run the world.
That’s precisely what she’ll do once she’s done with State and begins her international women’s organization, which will take on the seminal charge of her life, enforcing human rights are women’s rights, and kicking anyone’s ass that gets in her way.
“For my Dad, America was the land of opportunity, where the circumstances of birth are no barrier to achieving one’s dreams,” Romney said in a high-profile New Hampshire speech earlier this month. He added: “The spirit of enterprise, innovation, pioneering and derring-do propelled our standard of living and economy past every other nation on earth. I refuse to believe that America is just another place on the map with a flag.” – GOP 2012 theme: American ‘decline’
During Rush Limbaugh’s first hour today he went on a bender about Pres. Obama’s NCAA bracket picks, which was a top item on Mike Allen’s Playbook this morning (where I get my early a.m. news), which NRO quickly picked up with a “Wow.” When I wrote about it today on Twitter, as I often do when I listen to the first hour of Rush, Politico’s Jonathan Martin responded that it was also on the top of Drudge, which stands to reason since Limbaugh often channels what’s on his front page. In the center column was PRESIDENT CHECKS OUT: FOCUS ON B-BALL BRACKETS… with a link to a weird little piece on Obama not being present enough as the world roils.
I’ll let you be the judge of whether Pres. Obama is doing his job, which is the crux of the Right’s argument today, joined by other anti-Obama sites, evidently believing that a moment spent on NCAA March Madness picks will mean the end of American greatness.
But I also won’t make light of the image issue being presented, because one of the reasons Ronald Reagan was elected is because at the end of Pres. Carter’s first term he seemed not on top of what was happening in the world, while considered responsible for America slipping. That’s the main theme of the GOP for 2012. Now all the Right needs is a Reagan.
However, the notion that Pres. Obama needs to be either looking grim and concerned or be hidden away for fear of seeming frivolous amidst Japan’s catastrophic nuclear challenge is not only ridiculous, but inconsistent with life itself.
Taking 30 minutes to enjoy the simple pleasures of life while Japan roils is not craven. It’s called living. Like him or not, approve of his politics or not, Pres. Obama is on the job 24/7, non-stop. To suggest that by taking a few moments out to honor the pleasures of sports is presidential sacrilege is misunderstanding the importance of trivial pursuits at times of great stress. So what if Pres. Obama plays golf on Saturday? George W. Bush did it all the time, which Rush and the Right never cared about.
Life is a pressure cooker. High stress jobs and situations make it even worse. Being president is beyond what any of us can imagine, especially today, and let’s hope one of Barack Obama’s plans is to live well beyond his presidency, not kill himself in the job.
Taking some time to enjoy life doesn’t mean a president or a person isn’t taking care of business. No one can immerse him- or herself in work constantly without eventually blowing a physical fuse.
It’s not a sin to enjoy life even when others are suffering. In fact, it’s more important to appreciate the gifts of life when you’re spared tragedy and take the time to breathe in the bounty when fate passes you by.
As for the Republican 2012 message of “American ‘decline,’” if they had a candidate there is no doubt Pres. Obama is vulnerable for this type of marketing. People like the President, but his standoffish, non-engagement leadership style amidst world events exploding, with Americans used to our presidents inserting himself and our country across the globe, is not going down well with everyone.
A normal moment of trivial pursuit comes off as out of touch. Cue the Jimmy Carter theme music, which is exactly what Republicans are turning to with their 2012 “American ‘decline’” theme, which in times when people feel overwhelmed and powerless could resonate.
If only Republicans had a candidate who could sell the message, but they don’t, at least not yet.
It’s a good day to ponder when the United States will catch up with countries like Liberia. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected the 24th President of Liberia, but we are still contemplating the all boys’ club on the Left, while the Right ignites with an anti-feminist, anti-women agenda of people like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin.
Watching the women of the Middle East rise up and get involved directly in the “Arab Spring,” as some have called it, reveals an exciting time across the globe for women who are stepping forward to fight for their country. These femme freedom fighters are exhilarating to watch, even as they’re being greeted by Egyptian men chanting “A woman’s place is her house.” Blake Hounshell’s tweets today are illustrative of what these brave women are up against. Hearing “we don’t want it secular, egypt is in an islamic country” has got to be devastating and harrowing as men raise their shoes to the women trying to march today. It’s the beginning of a long fight for them.
Sect. Clinton celebrating IWD took questions, with the most obvious one asked yet again at a time when we’re preparing for yet another presidential election without a viable female candidate in sight:
After Clinton’s speech, the women asked questions of Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale, Assistant Secretary of Education Ann Stock and Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills.
One woman from Latin America left the panelists momentarily speechless.
“Do you think now that your country is ready for a woman as a president? I am not sure any of the three of us should answer that,” she said.
Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills said she does not think the U.S. is quite ready to elect a woman as head of state.
“I certainly think it is the case that our country demonstrated ably in the last election that they are more than willing to support women in a leadership role and more than willing to actually see a woman as their leader,” said Mills. “But I think for getting over that final hurdle, I think we are a little bit away.”
Why does Ms. Mills think we’re “a little bit away” from electing a female president? Part of the problem is that not enough women in the United States think it’s important.
In the last election cycle when Hillary Rodham Clinton took center stage, vast swaths of females simply shrugged, including on the Left and in progressive quarters. Called the “vagina vote,” women insisted, some would say rightly, that issues mattered more and allowing for a woman to make similar mistakes as a man on war and peace. Electing her to make a point and move women forward was not thought worth the fight, especially by the younger generation.
Perhaps that was because Hillary Clinton is perceived as a conservative Democrat, which really only applies to foreign policy, except where women’s rights as human rights are concerned. No man comes close to her active belief in women’s importance in diplomacy and foreign policy, their voices making the difference in a country’s stability. Clinton certainly isn’t as conservative as Pres. Obama on domestic issues, far from it. She also would never have served up women like the first female Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi did on health care, as Pelosi’s male counterpart president emboldened the Right through Executive Order. But on the Middle East there is simply no reason to believe Mrs. Clinton would have gone to Cairo or openly laid down a marker on illegal Israeli settlements. As for Afghanistan, she’d never consider what an Obama official said, when fighting for women’s rights in that country were recently reduced to “special interest and pet project… pet rocks in our rucksack.” Unfortunately, that didn’t bother many readers around here either, because only two people bothered to comment on this revelation, with “Sally” the only one to stay on topic. Even considering this site is largely a readership venue this nonchalance was telling, though as I said in the comments, what is more telling is that this story didn’t get any traction at all.
Looking at 2012, Cheryl Mills is certainly correct.
At least the Right has two females who are considering the presidency. It is interesting to note that on the day of the first Republican debate for 2012, Sarah Palin is booked to attend a “military appreciation” event and fundraiser. File it under she’ll do it her way if she does it at all.
When you look at the Left, there is yet to be a woman rise to take on the Democratic boys’ club. Not even the reality that the Democratic Party is carving away court-won rights of women on health care has inspired a woman to take a stand against the misogyny of the Blue Dog Democrats holding sway over too much congressional turf. Not even Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood gave a damn, her organization only stirred when the Right came after their federal funding. Pres. Obama is also not exactly a paragon of leadership on women’s rights, simply doing what most other males would do in his shoes, while selling off women in health care on the wings of an “accomplishment.”
As the Right comes after our freedoms and personal privacy no heroine on the Left has yet to rise up.
Looking to 2016, even as far away as it is, because I don’t find anything for women worth celebrating as 2012 revs up, it’s evident that it’s still very much a man’s world in the United States.
[H]ysteria is not a sign of health. When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He’s marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.
Nor is it a sign of health when other American conservatives are so fearful of a popular awakening that they side with the dictator against the democrats. Rather, it’s a sign of fearfulness unworthy of Americans, of short-sightedness uncharacteristic of conservatives, of excuse-making for thuggery unworthy of the American conservative tradition.
People at Fox News channel are allegedly talking anonymously about life after Glenn Beck, because of an erosion in mostly young demographics. But then again he beats his competition.
He still has numbers that just about any cable news host would envy and, with about two million viewers a night, outdraws all his competition combined. But the erosion is significant enough that Fox News officials are willing to say — anonymously, of course; they don’t want to be identified as criticizing the talent — that they are looking at the end of his contract in December and contemplating life without Mr. Beck.
… But the partnership, which has been good for both parties, may yet be repaired. On Wednesday’s show, Mr. Beck went to some lengths to demonstrate gratitude and fealty to Fox News.
The author of the piece, David Carr, is covering the gamut trying to not get caught in his own trap to have it both ways so he doesn’t get pegged for a nonsensical verdict that hasn’t yet arrived and may never.
There is one problem for Fox with Beck and it isn’t demographics or the reported “sniping between Fox News executives and Mr. Beck’s team.”
The problem with “Glenn Beck” is that it has turned into a serial doomsday machine that’s a bummer to watch.
… Mr. Beck, a more gifted entertainer than most cable hosts, can still bring it, lighting up with characters and voices. But much of the time, there is sense that the fatigue from always being on alert, tilting forward in the saddle against the next menace, is starting to wear him down.
What had been a fast and loose assault on all things liberal has grown darker and less entertaining, especially with the growing revolution in the Middle East, a phenomenon Mr. Beck sees as something of a beginning to some kind of end.
[...] He often looked away from the camera into a middle distance as he spoke of a calamity that only he can see.
Fox execs are allegedly talking to Glenn Beck telling him to “maintain a sense of hope.”
All religious fanatics waiting for the apocalypse face the dire reality if it doesn’t come.
“When I first came here,” he told his audience on Wednesday, “I had this pie-in-the-sky belief that if I told you the truth, if I verified all of my facts and double-checked, and we could make that compelling case with facts to back it up, the journalists in other places would get curious and they’d use their resources and they’d investigate and they’d prove it right and they’d show it too.” Then he shook his head and laughed bitterly.
Mr. Beck remains firm in his belief that something is going terribly wrong and it may be time to stock up on canned goods and head to the basement. The problem with predicting doomsday is that if you’re wrong, you have to figure out what to say the next day. And if you’re right … well, the ratings will be terrific, for what that’s worth.
It’s tiresome to be wrong when you’re talking about Armageddon, because there is no way to find your way back, because a person like Mr. Beck hasn’t left enough crumbs of sanity to find his way to reality.
So, I’m not sure what Glenn Beck thread the New York Times is pulling in the hopes to hit on the moment of unraveling of a man still on doing better than most. But the Glenn Beck doomsday narrative became exhausting a long time ago.
You also cannot claim to be a serious news organization when your Wal-Mart version of Howard Beale is not just making the case for fury against the world, but is also mustering his people down a path that sounds remarkably like a suicide pact.
What would happen to Glenn Beck if he left Fox? Like all wackos he’ll retreat to wingnut radio, that dying world kept alive by the gasbaggery of the Rush Limbaugh tribe.
“Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.” – Sect. Hillary Clinton (via ABC News)
Revenge is a dish best served unemotionally, with vast evidence to back up your charges, and delivered from a place of power.
Sect. Clinton talking about the U.S. losing the information wars and damning the programming of traditional and cable news isn’t a new charge. However, it is new coming from her and especially salient when said at a Senate hearing.
The State Dept. has attempted to do many things in new media to help win the information war.
And as someone who has been a “talking head” on Al Jazeera, they’ve got plenty of babbling political and other expert analysts, so on that statement Sect. Clinton is simply incorrect. The day before they released the Palestinian Papers, all day long they had opinion makers on to discuss what hadn’t been released yet. I commented on it in this column.
Also on the topic of the information wars, where Wikileaks is concerned Sect. Clinton is adamantly against this type of transparency, which is where the competition for information will be:
“Let’s be clear: This disclosure is not just an attack on America’s foreign policy interests,” Clinton told journalists in the Treaty Room, an ornate Wedgewood-blue salon near her office. “It is an attack on the international community – the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity.” – Hillary Clinton: WikiLeaks release an ‘attack on international community’
As someone who has praised Al Jazeera severaltimes, Sect. Clinton’s statements are appreciated.
One of the worst aspects of American media goes well beyond Clinton’s well delivered critique. It begins with how men dominate women across the board, especially as hosts, but also on Sunday shows. However, the real problem with the U.S. media is that too many anchors are ass kissing camera muggers looking for their next million. Al Zazeera’s anchors are working stiffs who don’t get paid anything close to the U.S. media stars who are elevated higher than they’ve earned to be.
In America, news is subjected to the Hollywood treatment. We don’t know any other way anymore.
Sect. Clinton was delivering an important point and she’s correct, Al Jazeera is effective, very effective. Like when they stripped the bark off of the State Dept.’s own P.J. Crowley for going on air unprepared.
Nicholas Kristoff has been making waves tweeting and blogging exciting columns live from Egypt, then Bahrain.
Paul Krugman keeps writing regular columns, but blogs daily.
Ms. Pearls weighs in this week offering a re-hash of old news and views from last week, which makes today’s Sunday column as outdated as her Sunday only presence in the Gray Lady. Today Dowd’s still writing about Nir Rosen and Debbie Schlussel. There’s really no reason to read Dowd anymore, because by the time she writes on Sunday her columns are not only old news, but any acerbic witticism comes across flat and tired.
MoDo needs to either start blogging or perish, because right now nothing she writes is even worth citing. It’s all been said before.
HayaAlfa Hayaa AlFadhel @NickKristof Stop spreading lies! where were u when 200,000 Bahraini went to celebrate our king peacefully! you’re a disgrace to reporters!
Troops and tanks have locked down Manama, the Bahraini capital, and a ban has been announced on public gatherings as pro-reform supporters bury their dead, a day after a violent security crackdown.
Tanks and armoured personnel carriers were patrolling the streets of Manama on Friday, where checkpoints have been set up by the country’s military.
Riot police using clubs and tear gas broke up a crowd of protesters in the city’s financial district in a pre-dawn swoop on Thursday, killing at least four people.
Al Jazeera’s correspondent, who cannot be named for security reasons, reported from Manama on Friday that thousands of people observed the funerals of three people killed in the police raid on the protesters’ tents in the city’s Pearl Roundabout area.
For the first time since he was banned from leading weekly friday (sic) prayers in Egypt 30 years ago, prominent Muslim scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi will lead thousands in the weekly prayers from Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday.
Sources told Al Arabiya that a military force will accompany the head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars from his home to Tahrir Square, provide security for the prayers and accompany him back to his residence.
Richard Engel in Bahrain, which sounds like a harrowing place to be fighting right now. Tweets:
Reports a group from a funeral decided to march to pearl.. Shot as they approached
In Yemen, today is being observed as the “Friday of Fury.”
The daughters of the missing opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, told an opposition Web site that they had had no word from either of their parents since Tuesday and feared they had been detained. Security forces have surrounded their home, and all communications have been cut.
TM Note: The picture above came from Twitter, original source unknown.
The U.S. informed Arab governments Tuesday that it will support a U.N. Security Council statement reaffirming that the 15-nation body “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity,” a move aimed at avoiding the prospect of having to veto a stronger Palestinian resolution calling the settlements illegal.
But the Palestinians rejected the American offer following a meeting late Wednesdy [sic] of Arab representativs [sic] and said it is planning to press for a vote on its resolution Friday, according to officials familar [sic] with the issue. The decision to reject the American offer raised the prospect that the Obama adminstration [sic] will cast its first ever veto in the U.N. Security Council.
The Palestinians are seeing what’s rolling across the Arab world, which manifested in a sacked pharaoh in Egypt, obviously believing that this is the moment to press for it all, which would undoubtedly get vetoed.
Needless to say the Right is freaking out, as you can witness here, here, here, here for starters. Other framing so far is that the Obama administration signing on to a U.N. Security Council to reaffirm that Israeli settlements are illegitimate is “a major reversal” of U.S. policy.
It’s not a reversal of what Pres. Obama has said publicly, but to do so inside the U.N. Security Council is different.
Rep. Andy Weiner is having none of it. Via Ben Smith:
This is too clever by half. Instead of doing the correct and principled thing and vetoing an inappropriate and wrong resolution, they now have opened the door to more and more anti-Israeli efforts coming to the floor of the U.N. The correct venue for discussions about settlements and the other aspects of a peace plan is at the negotiating table. Period.
Mr. Weiner is wrong, but he’s also a New York Democrat.
On another tract, Rep. Ron Paul is trying to get $6 billion of U.S. Middle East aide cut. Via Josh Rogin:
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), have not been shy about their desire to end all U.S. foreign aid. This week, the elder member of the Paul family is seeking a full House vote on an amendment that would cut $6 billion of U.S. aid to a host of Middle East countries.
Rep. Paul is trying to build support for an amendment to the fiscal 2011 funding bill that would end all foreign assistance to Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Pakistan. The funding bill currently being debated by the House, called the continuing resolution (CR), is needed to keep the government running after March 4.
If you didn’t think the world had changed enough lately, just a reminder.
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