I find it quite astounding that people who bashed Bush for attacking and invading both Afghanistan and Iraq are spinning in favor of Obama's act of military interventionism in Libya. Not only that, if Iraq was all about oil, what the frick is Libya about? RC Cola? Kick out a dictator or regime change in Iraq? Sounds a lot like Libya.
Get the slow moving, reoccuring picture? War actions are bound to offend the Constitution on some level.
It increasingly feels as if all a President needs to do is "build a coalition" to get a pass to go to war. "Coalition" of course means getting sexy names like Germany (who have taken a "Lennie" from Of Mice and Men, approach to foreign policy in the post war era) and France (the quintessential argumentative "I love you but I don't really does it really matter?" nation) involved. Never mind the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Poland, Japan, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Spain, and Palau (!) took part in various ways until 2009. I don't know, but I don't see much "unilateralism" if this list means anything.
Libya should have fallen squarely on the shoulders of the (allegedly) sagacious European Union.
Why so bitter? Because Obama's war didn't cost trillions and bog us down for years?
ReplyDeleteSo that makes it ok? That he was "cost-effective?"
ReplyDeleteI'm looking at it from a bigger picture. The reasons for going in are not entirely unlike Bush and the spinning of it doesn't change that it's still interventionism.
In fact, a case can be made America had less of a reason to go in. They could have leant moral or cash support and let the EU deal with it.
Bah. Foreign entanglements are just the nature of things; temporarily put on hold during Washington's presidency.
Bret, you said "Because Obama's war didn't cost trillions and bog us down for years?"
ReplyDeleteTo which I reply ".... yet."
Bush's Iraq War only lasted a few weeks and Saddam was toppled, out of power, and on the run. It was the "peace", the aftermath, which has drawn out into years and entailed great costs.
T.C., you are correct... it is a matter of "situational [political] ethics".