Libya: Just how pathetic is Barack Obama?
**Posted by Phineas
The British have dispatched the Royal Navy and their SAS –their elite Special Air Service— to evacuate their citizens from Libya:
The SAS was ordered into Libya on Thursday to oversee the evacuation of hundreds of British nationals after the Government’s response to the crisis came in for widespread criticism.
Nearly 500 Britons were successfully repatriated throughout the day after three RAF Hercules transport aircraft and a Royal Navy frigate were pressed into action.
The Daily Telegraph has learnt that special forces were on the ground in Tripoli to ensure the evacuation of all British nationals went smoothly.
SAS officers offered support and advice to private security firms drafted in to rescue more than 170 oil workers stranded in remote desert compounds.
Last night the frigate HMS Cumberland set sail from Benghazi with 200 passengers on board, many of them British.
Rescue efforts were still under way last night but the Government insisted that it was close to getting everybody out.
That is how the government of a world power is supposed to take care of its people!
So, what did President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama, Commander in Chief of the mightiest military the world has ever seen, do? Dispatch a carrier battle group with Marines to rescue our people? Drop in Special Forces to secure an evacuation zone? Declare a no-fly zone and crack a few sonic booms over Tripoli as a warning to Qaddafi?
Nope. The 45th President of the United States, successor in office to Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, TR, FDR, Reagan, and all the rest… rented a ferry:
Right now, in Libya, there are hundreds of Americans waiting for evacuation … by ferry.
Seriously. The State Department has chartered a ferry to take the hundreds of waiting Americans to Malta. But rough seas have delayed the ferry’s departure until Friday.
A ferry. We have the biggest navy in the world and all that wimp can do is rent a ferry, as if this were some excursion in the bay instead of an evacuation in the middle of a civil war.
Others offered earlier the reasonable argument that Obama wasn’t doing more because he didn’t want to do something that might set Qaddafi off to take revenge on Americans. But that obviously isn’t a concern if the Brits feel they can send in the SAS…
Yet we rent a ferry.
Unbelievable.
Mr. President… Barry… Stop it. Just stop. You’re embarrassing us.
UPDATE: After three days, the ferry has finally left the dock in Tripoli and the Americans are out. Maybe next time we should ask London to do it for us.
(Crossposted at Public Secrets)