by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
Almost daily over the last four months we were told that Muammar Gadhafi was about ready to throw in the towel and give up.<\/p>\n
Libya, after all, is not a distant Afghanistan or Iraq with a population of some 30 million. Yet this tiny police state of less than 7 million people, conveniently located on the Mediterranean Sea opposite nearby Europe, continues to thwart the three great powers of the NATO alliance and thousands of “Arab Spring” rebels.<\/p>\n
In March, President Obama ordered the use of American bombers and cruise missiles to join in with the French and British to finish off the tottering Gadhafi regime. Obama was apparently stung by liberal criticism that the US had done little to help rebels in their weeks-long effort to remove Gadhafi \u2014 after only belatedly supporting the successful revolutionaries in Tunisia and Egypt.<\/p>\n
Months ago, intervention to the Obama administration seemed a short, painless way of ridding the world of a decades-long international menace while gaining praise for helping “democratic” reformers. Oil, of course, is always a subtext in any Middle Eastern war.<\/p>\n
But almost immediately contradictions arose. Sometimes we ordered Gadhafi to leave; at other times we insisted we were only helping the rebels. Bombs seemed to be aimed at the Gadhafi family, even as we denied such targeted killing \u2014 and were reminded that US law forbids the assassination of foreign leaders.<\/p>\n
The rebels were variously described as would-be democratic reformers, inept amateurs, hard-core Islamists, or mixtures of all three. No one seems to have answers months later, though many insurgents share a deep-seeded racial and religious hatred of Gadhafi’s African mercenaries. Who knows whether post-Gadhafi Libya will become an Islamic republic, a Somalia-like mess, another Arab dictatorship or a Turkish-style democracy?<\/p>\n
The more NATO forces destroyed Gadhafi’s tanks, artillery, planes and boats, the more the unhinged dictator seemed to cling to power. Western leaders had forgotten that Gadhafi lost a war with Egypt in 1977, lost a war with Chad in 1987, and came out on the losing end of Ronald Reagan’s bombing campaign in 1986 \u2014 and yet clung to power and remains the planet’s longest-ruling dictator. Terror, oil, cash reserves and a loyal mercenary army are a potent combination.<\/p>\n
The Obama administration asked for legal authorization from the Arab League \u2014 the majority of whose member states are not democratic \u2014 and the UN, but to this day strangely has not requested authorization from Congress. As Obama sought legitimacy within international authorizations, he failed to note that no UN or Arab League resolution actually had allowed him to conduct a full-scale air war against Gadhafi’s ruling clique. The Chinese and Russians are both happy to keep pointing that out.<\/p>\n
Both conservatives and liberals were flabbergasted by the sudden preemptive war. Conservatives who supported the messy efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq were reluctant to champion a third one in Libya without congressional authority and with no clearly stated mission or methodology. When we entered an on-again\/off-again cycle of operations, Republicans charged that a weakened, fiscally insolvent America was sort of “leading from behind.”<\/p>\n
Liberals were appalled that the president, who, as a senator, had always praised the War Powers Act, was now ordering his legal team to find ingenious ways of bypassing it. If this was to be a multilateral, un-Bush war, why then did it split NATO apart? Roughly half the members declined to participate. Both Germany and Italy soon openly opposed the effort. And now the instigator, France, seems to want to bail.<\/p>\n
The left had also decried Western attacks on oil-exporting Muslim countries, but now liberal-in-chief Barack Obama was doing just that. Indeed, the antiwar president who promised to end the Bush Mideast wars had suddenly expanded them into a third theater. The more the war dragged on, the more the Arab world was torn between hating Gadhafi and hating Obama’s bombs.<\/p>\n
The odious Gadhafi has been an international pariah for most of his tenure, funding terrorists, killing Americans and murdering dissidents. But even as the bombs were dropped, he was a monster in the midst of rehab. By late 2010 his jet-setting family was being courted by Western intellectuals, reestablishing diplomatic relations with the United States, offering oil concessions to the West, and being praised as a partner in the war against radical Islamic terrorism.<\/p>\n
Then, with a snap of the fingers, in early 2011 Gadhafi was suddenly reinvented as a Saddam Hussein-like ogre and dodging Western cruise missiles and bombs targeted at his person.<\/p>\n
What is next?<\/p>\n
The general consensus, from both left and right, is that we should finish the misadventure as quickly as possible. Apparently, the only thing worse than starting a stupid, unnecessary war against a madman is losing it.<\/p>\n
\u00a92011 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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Muammar Gadhafi's forces in Libya. He instead hopes that others can force out Gadhafi \u2014 or that the dictator will leave through economic and diplomatic pressure. It will apparently be up to NATO\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2022,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-middle-east-mess-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2527,"position":1},"title":"The Middle East Mess","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Libya, Iraq, Syria, Iran, and the All the Same Old, Same Old Mess Each country in the Middle East poses unique challenges. That said, gender apartheid, religious intolerance, tribalism, dictatorship, statism, and lack of transparency and free expression are widely shared in the region,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":384,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-bright-and-shining-libyan-lie\/","url_meta":{"origin":2527,"position":2},"title":"A Bright and Shining Libyan Lie","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Almost everything we have been told about\u00a0Libya\u00a0over the last two years is untrue. A free\u00a0Libya\u00a0was supposed to be proof of President Obama's enlightened reset\u00a0Middle East\u00a0policy. When insurgency broke out there,\u00a0the United States\u00a0joined\u00a0France\u00a0and\u00a0Great Britain\u00a0in bombing\u00a0Muammar Gadhafi\u00a0out of power \u2014 and supposedly empowering a democratic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":388,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-return-of-the-angry-reader\/","url_meta":{"origin":2527,"position":3},"title":"The Return of the Angry Reader","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers In response to a column on Libya one reader wrote: But Hanson's argument here is much bigger than the embassy killings. Except, I'm not entirely clear what the thesis is. Is he saying it was a mistake to go into Libya? Is he saying\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2416,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-lovely-little-nato-intervention\/","url_meta":{"origin":2527,"position":4},"title":"A Lovely Little NATO Intervention","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine World powers sometimes have to fight wars not for some material interest, but for bolstering a nation\u2019s prestige in order to deter more dangerous aggressors. As Margaret Thatcher said after England\u2019s defeat of Argentina in the 1982 Falklands War, the conflict showed that \u201cnow\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":440,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/middle-east-madness\/","url_meta":{"origin":2527,"position":5},"title":"Middle East Madness","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Last week, Muslim mobs took to the streets to murder the American ambassador in Libya and three of his staffers. American embassies were attacked from Egypt to Yemen. Embarrassed White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2528,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2527\/revisions\/2528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}