by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
Hudson New York<\/em><\/p>\n President Obama’s\u00a0recent explanation<\/a>\u00a0for militarily engaging Libya is yetanother example<\/a>\u00a0of how US leaders increasingly rationalize their policies via sentimental and idealistic platitudes, rather than reality or the long view \u2014 or just plain common sense.<\/p>\n In a speech replete with moralizing intonations, Obama did manage to evoke US “interests” \u2014 six times \u2014 though he never explained what these are. Instead, we were admonished about “our responsibilities to our fellow human beings” and how not assisting them “would have been a betrayal of who we are.” Further, by juxtaposing America’s “interests” with its “values” \u2014 Obama did so twice in his Libya speech \u2014 indicates that he may see the two as near synonymous, though they certainly are not.<\/p>\n The closest thing to a fuzzy “interest” that Obama posited is the need to contain Libyan rebels from fleeing to and disrupting nearby nations, such as Egypt, a country of “democratic impulses” where “change will inspire us and raise hopes” \u2014 so an overly optimistic Obama observed. While there certainly are liberal, secular elements in Egypt’s revolution, increasing evidence \u2014 from an Islamist-inclined military that\u00a0opens fire on its Christian minority<\/a>, to the recent referendum which\u00a0serves the Muslim Brotherhood<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 indicates that, left to itself, Egypt is poised to look more like Iran than America.<\/p>\n Of course, the Obama administration is not against Islamists rising to power \u2014 so long as it is through the “will” of the people. As the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/a><\/em>\u00a0put it, the administration “supports a role for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamist organization, in a reformed Egyptian government.” Even in his speech, Obama said the US must support “the freedom for people to express themselves and choose their leaders”; must support “governments that are ultimately responsive to the aspirations of the people.” The underlying assumption is that people always choose liberal forms of governments \u2014 a demonstrably\u00a0false notion<\/a>: Nazis, Hamas, the mullahs \u2014 all came to power through the “aspirations of the people.”<\/p>\n As for Libya’s nebulous opposition, even before Obama decided to support them, the\u00a0Washington Post<\/a><\/em>\u00a0had reported that “the administration knows little about Libya’s well-armed rebels, [and] cannot predict the political system that might replace Qaddafi’s bizarre rule.” More recent evidence indicates that the US is arming the same jihadists who four years earlier were\u00a0trying to kill Americans in Iraq<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet Obama bypasses all these obstacles by engaging in moral posturing, asserting, for example, that a massacre in eastern Libya’s Benghazi “would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world. It was not in our national interest to let that happen. I refused to let that happen.” Again, no clarification exactly how an intertribal massacre \u2014 regular occurrences the world over \u2014 is “not in our national interest.” Moreover, asJihad Watch<\/em>\u00a0director\u00a0Robert Spencer<\/a>\u00a0soberly puts it:<\/p>\n Eastern Libya [Benghazi], where the anti-Qaddafi forces are based, is a hotbed of anti-Americanism and jihadist sentiment. A report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center reveals that during the last few years, more jihadists per capita entered Iraq from Libya than from any other Muslim country \u2014 and most of them came from the region that is now spearheading the revolt against Qaddafi.<\/p>\n Perhaps Obama simply sees the rebels as “freedom-fighters” \u2014 as a recentExaminer<\/a><\/em>\u00a0headline phrases it: “U.S. supports Al Qaeda ‘freedom fighters’ against Qaddafi in Libyan civil war.” If so, it is well to reflect that the US has been down this road before, when it supported Afghanistan’s “freedom-fighting” mujahidin against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, only for Afghanistan to become a terrorist haven and al Qaeda’s headquarters, where the strikes of 9\/11 were devised.<\/p>\n As opposed to today, however, it was less evident during the Reagan era that Islamists would become a global headache; plus, the reason for supporting the mujahidin was less idealistic and more to do with actual US interests \u2014 containing Soviet expansion and influence.<\/p>\n Conversely, in Obama’s Libyan adventure, we know for a fact that Islamist forces are involved; we know for a fact what happens when Islamists assume power \u2014 whether the mullahs in Iran, Hamas in the Palestinian Authority, or the Taliban in Afghanistan: they become anti-American, terrorist breeding grounds. Finally, as Obama explained it, no US interests are being served either way.<\/p>\n Indeed, even Obama’s humanitarian argument for Libyan intervention is full of holes: if the opposition overthrows Qaddafi, it will likely be they, the opposition, who inflict a bloodbath on their countrymen \u2014 the usual denouement of intertribal warfare. In this context, whereas US intervention will have saved the lives of eastern Libyans, it will be seen as complicit in the killing of western Libyans \u2014 and, as usual, used as fodder to incite further anti-Americanism in the region.<\/p>\n Further, Obama’s point that, though many people around the world are being oppressed by their governments, “that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what’s right,” also raises questions: Of all the current global conflicts where innocents are being massacred, couldn’t the administration at least narrow it down to helping one of the many groups that does\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0have al-Qaeda ties and was\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0fighting Americans in Iraq?<\/p>\n How about “doing what’s right” in Darfur, where countless non-Muslims have been butchered by the Islamist regime in Khartoum for these many years? How about “doing what’s right” regarding the persecuted, indigenous Christians of the Islamic world? (Whereas one of Obama’s reasons for intervening in Libya was that\u00a0mosques were unintentionally being destroyed<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 he has been silent in word and deed regarding the\u00a0numerous<\/a>\u00a0churches<\/a>\u00a0intentionally being destroyed in the Muslim world.)<\/p>\n In sum, as he explained it, not only does Obama’s decision to intervene militarily in Libya not serve any tangible American interests; it may directly serve the interests of the Islamist enemy. More ironic, the humanitarian argument is full of holes.\u00a0 One is left hoping that, for strategic purposes, Obama is not being fully transparent, but does have concrete US interests in mind \u2014 which, of course, is exactly how practically every Arab interprets US intervention.<\/p>\n Hence, the final irony: While Obama’s fine platitudes to justify war may satisfy some Americans, they are far from achieving their objective: winning over the much coveted Arab “hearts-and-minds,” two quantities that \u2014 as evinced from the Arabic media to the Arab street \u2014 are thoroughly cynical, and thus reject the notion that nations ever militarily intervene out of sheer altruism.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Raymond Ibrahim Hudson New York President Obama’s\u00a0recent explanation\u00a0for militarily engaging Libya is yetanother example\u00a0of how US leaders increasingly rationalize their policies via sentimental and idealistic platitudes, rather than reality or the long view \u2014 or just plain common sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[159,227,196],"tags":[233,12,1045,1035,1048,160],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-RU","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3424,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/libya-what-to-do\/","url_meta":{"origin":3342,"position":0},"title":"Libya, What To Do?","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim National Review Online As with Egypt, American sympathies instinctively side with Libya's oppositional forces as they seek to overthrow the tyrant Qaddafi \u2014 and rightfully so. But where US foreign policy is concerned, prudence is in order. This is especially the case considering that the Obama administration\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":384,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-bright-and-shining-libyan-lie\/","url_meta":{"origin":3342,"position":1},"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":7048,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/seven-christians-executed-in-libya\/","url_meta":{"origin":3342,"position":2},"title":"Seven Christians Executed in Libya","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com\u00a0 Libyan authorities came across the slain bodies of seven Christian Copts in the region of Garutha, less than 20 miles west of Benghazi, on Monday afternoon. According to Libyan authorities, \u201cThe slain were killed by gunshots all over their bodies.\u201d Pictures (reproduced above and below) confirm\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":390,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-stakes-in-tonights-foreign-policy-debate\/","url_meta":{"origin":3342,"position":3},"title":"The Stakes in Tonight’s Foreign Policy Debate","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine Foreign policy, the topic of tonight\u2019s debate, was suddenly thrust into the voters\u2019 consciousness by the murder of 4 Americans, including our ambassador, in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9\/11. Intensifying the fallout of this event has been the Obama administration\u2019s incoherent, clumsy, duplicitous, and\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":6318,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/putinology\/","url_meta":{"origin":3342,"position":4},"title":"Putinology","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner Barack Obama\u2019s cancellation of his Russian visit is the normal sort of diplomat payback for insult and injury \u2014 in this case the asylum offered Edward Snowden in the face of administration pleas to send him home for punishment. 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