How The One screwed up in Libya: let VDH count the ways

**Posted by Phineas

Like most people outside the moonbat Left and isolationist Right, I supported the idea of intervening in Libya’s civil war, even though that support was qualified. And now that we’re in battle, my opinion is that we don’t stop until Qaddafi is gone; he’s too dangerous to leave behind, angry and vengeful.

But, well, Obama and his underlings have gone about this in about the most feckless, dunderheaded, and incompetent way possible. From dithering over getting involved until it was almost (and may still be) too late to stating goals that not only change, but are mutually exclusive, to coming up with the lame-brained idea of placing US forces under the command of an international committee of bureaucrats, this administration has done about everything one can think of to make sure it loses support for this kinetic military action war.

At National Review, Victor Davis Hanson enumerates the ways Obama is screwing this up. As with anything from VDH, read the whole thing, but here’s one in particular that stuck with me:

7) Leadership: This is a Potemkin coalition, far smaller than the one that fought in either Afghanistan or Iraq, notwithstanding loud proclamations to the contrary. We are not even done with the first week of bombing, and yet no one seems in charge: What body/country/alliance determines targets, issues communiques, or coordinates diplomacy? The U.K. goes after Qaddafi, and we plead “They did it, not us”? Again, fairly or not, the impression is that Obama dressed up preponderant American intervention under a multicultural fig leaf, earning the downsides of both. A loud multilateral effort could be wise diplomacy, but not if it translates into a desire to subordinate American options and profile to European and international players that are not commensurately shouldering the burden — and not if all this is cynically used to advance a welcomed new unexceptional American profile.

When we talk of “European leadership,” we mean the U.K. and France, not Germany, Italy, or most of the EU. When we talk of the “Arab League,” we mean essentially zero military assets. And when we talk of the “U.N.,” we mean zero blue-helmeted troops. So, like it or not, there is a level of understandable cynicism that suspects Obama’s new paradigm of multilateral, international action is simply the same-old, same-old, albeit without the advantages that accrue when America is unapologetic about its leadership role, weathers the criticism, and insists on the options and prerogatives that a superpower must demand in war by virtue of its power and sacrifice.

And on this theme of leadership and American exceptionalism, let me point you to this article by Tony Katz at Pajamas Media. It goes to the heart of Obama’s Socialist “education” in New York and Chicago: that America is no better than any other nation, that the exercise of overwhelming American power is a problem — that, in the end, America herself is the problem:

[The report on human rights in the US to the UNHRC –pf.] was the “tell.” Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism. America is no better, and no worse, than any other nation. So, in his estimation, why shouldn’t America be subject to the same “ruler on the knuckles” punishment as every other nation that abuses its people … like Libya?

These are the values that Obama holds dear, and they guide his decisions on every front. While pundits and politicos were cackling about his trip to Brazil and South America, Obama kept along with seeing the sights, dancing in Rio, and staying away from press conferences.

For what reason would the president not go on his scheduled vacation trip? The job of the president of the United States, as he sees it, is to be a willing, bowing cog in the world machine. To be morally unambiguous would be a slight to the ruling world order, the one that only multiculturalism brings.

Obama does not see the presidency, and himself in it, as the leader of the free world. Based upon the historical perspective, it is an impediment to a better world where all are equal. The president believes that America is the impediment to a safer, better world, just as he believes that “settlements” are the impediment to a safer, better Israel.

Emphases added. We can take this as part of the foundation on which all the errors VDH* lists are based.

*It truly is an unjust world, wherein an idiot like Barbara Boxer, and not Dr. Hanson, represents California in the Senate.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)