by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
By bombing Libya, President Obama has accomplished some things once thought absolutely impossible in America:<\/p>\n
(a)\u00a0War-mongering liberals<\/em>: Liberals are now chest-thumping about military \u201cprogress\u201d in Libya. Even liberal television and radio commentators cite ingenious reasons why an optional, preemptive American intervention in an oil-producing Arab country, without prior congressional approval or majority public support \u2014 and at a time of soaring deficits \u2014 is well worth supporting, in a sort of \u201cmy president, right or wrong,\u201d fashion. Apparently, liberal foreign policy is returning to the pre-Vietnam days of the hawkish \u201cbest and brightest.\u201d<\/p>\n (b)\u00a0Europe first<\/em>: Many Americans have long complained about the opportunistic, utopian Europeans. Under the protective US defense shield, they often privately urged us to deal with dangerous foreign dictators \u2014 while staying above the fray to criticize America, at the same time seeking trade advantages and positive global PR. But now the wily Obama has outwaited even the French. He has managed to shame them into acting, with a new opossum-like US strategy of playing dead until finally the Europeans were exasperated \u2014 almost as if the president were warning them, \u201cWe don\u2019t mind the Qaddafi bloodletting if you, who are much closer to it, don\u2019t mind.\u201d The British\u00a0Guardian<\/em>\u00a0and French\u00a0Le Monde<\/em>\u00a0will be too knee-deep in the Libyan war, busy chalking up Anglo-French \u201cwins\u201d and worrying about European oil concessions, to charge America with the usual imperialism, colonialism, and militarism. We are almost back to the 1956 world of the Suez crisis.<\/p>\n (c)\u00a0Iraq was just a prequel to Libya<\/em>: Conservatives have complained that opposition \u2014 especially in the cases of then-senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden \u2014 to George W. Bush\u2019s antiterrorism policies and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was more partisan than principled. Obama ended that debate by showing that not only can he embrace \u2014 or, on occasion, expand \u2014 the Bush-Cheney tribunals, preventive detentions, renditions, Predator attacks, intercepts and wiretaps, and Guantanamo Bay, but he can now preemptively attack an Arab oil-exporting country without fear of Hollywood, congressional cutoffs, MoveOn.org \u201cGeneral Betray Us\u201d\u2013type ads, Cindy Sheehan on the evening news, or\u00a0Checkpoint<\/em>-like novels. In short, Obama has ensured that the antiwar movement will never be quite the same.<\/p>\n (d)\u00a0Monster-in-recovery<\/em>: The Qaddafi clan has been wooing Westerners through oil money and multicultural gobbledygook. In the last few years, the British released the Lockerbie bomber, a native of Libya; Saif Qaddafi, the would-be artist and scholar and the son of Col. Moammar Qaddafi, essentially bought a Ph.D. from the prestigious London School of Economics; the creepy Harvard-connected Monitor Group hired out cash-hungry \u201cscholars\u201d to write tributes to Qaddafi\u2019s achievements; and Mariah Carey, 50 Cent, Beyonc\u00e9, and other entertainers earned a pile of petrodollars by crooning for the Qaddafis. Then, suddenly, Obama spoiled the fun and profits by turning Qaddafi from a rehabilitated monster back into Ronald Reagan\u2019s old \u201cMad Dog of the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n (e)\u00a0Stuff happens<\/em>: Many supporters of the Iraq War condemned Abu Ghraib as the poorly supervised, out-of-control prison it was. Lax American oversight resulted in the sexual humiliation of detained Iraqi insurgents. It was a deplorable episode, in which, nonetheless, no one was killed, and yet it took an enormous toll on the credibility of Bush-administration officials. But while the media were covering the Libyan bombing and the Middle East uprisings, a number of Afghan civilians allegedly were executed by a few rogue American soldiers. That was a far worse transgression than anything that happened at Abu Ghraib during Bush\u2019s tenure \u2014 but it was apparently an incident that, in the new media climate, could legitimately be ignored. Obama made \u201cstuff happens\u201d an acceptable defense for those doing their best to run a war from Washington.<\/p>\n (f)\u00a0War really is tiring<\/em>: The media serially blamed a supposedly lazy Ronald Reagan for napping during military operations abroad. George W. Bush was criticized for cutting brush at his Texas ranch while soldiers fought and died in Iraq. Obama rendered all such presidential criticism mere nitpicking when he started aerial bombardment in the midst of golfing, handicapping the NCAA basketball tournament, and taking his family to Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n (g)\u00a0The road to Damascus<\/em>? After Bush\u2019s interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, many war-weary Americans believed that we would never again get involved in a Middle East war. But now, with Obama\u2019s preemptive bombing of Libya, giddy American interventionists are again eyeing Iran, Syria \u2014 and beyond!<\/p>\n In short, Obama turned America upside down when he bombed Libya \u2014 and in ways we could have scarcely imagined.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services By bombing Libya, President Obama has accomplished some things once thought absolutely impossible in America:<\/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],"tags":[12,51,1015,332,293,1040,1080,1048,1044,1054,1016,1030],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Sj","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2527,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-dumb-and-dumber-war-in-libya\/","url_meta":{"origin":3367,"position":0},"title":"A Dumb and Dumber War in Libya","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Almost daily over the last four months we were told that Muammar Gadhafi was about ready to throw in the towel and give up. Libya, after all, is not a distant Afghanistan or Iraq with a population of some 30 million. Yet this\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":3410,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-libyan-march-madness\/","url_meta":{"origin":3367,"position":1},"title":"Our Libyan March Madness","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The prognosis for Libya might be better if our president cared more about it than about the NCAA. The Obama administration\u2019s Libyan strategy is a paradox \u2014 resulting from the president\u2019s belatedly announcing that Moammar Qaddafi must go, using military force against him,\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":3369,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/libya-the-genesis-of-a-bad-idea\/","url_meta":{"origin":3367,"position":2},"title":"Libya: The Genesis of a Bad Idea","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The president spoke Monday night to clarify our intervention in Libya. Instead he made things worse, and could not explain the mission (are we\/are we not after Qaddafi?), the methodology to achieve it (are we in a no-fly-zone or are we bombing ground targets\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":3422,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/should-we-intervene-in-libya\/","url_meta":{"origin":3367,"position":3},"title":"Should We Intervene in Libya?","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online There are plenty of good arguments for imposing a no-fly zone in Libya. Without Libyan-government air strikes, the rebels might have a better chance of carving out permanent zones of resistance. Qaddafi has a long record of supporting anti-American terrorism, whether in the\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":3339,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/libya-is-not-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":3367,"position":4},"title":"Libya Is Not Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The Left is terribly embarrassed about the US intervention in Libya. We have preemptively attacked an Arab Muslim nation that posed little threat to the national-security interests of the United States. President Obama did not have majority support among the American people. Nor\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":924,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/syrian-ironies\/","url_meta":{"origin":3367,"position":5},"title":"Syrian Ironies","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The more Bashar Assad butchers Syrian dissidents, the more the world community expresses outrage \u2014 while it does little to stop the bloodletting. Why? Ironies on top of ironies 1.\u00a0The politics of intervention. Republicans might seem the most likely to push for an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3367"}],"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=3367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3368,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3367\/revisions\/3368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}