Fools at War

Doug Bandow

Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute

 

Fiasco in Libya: Fools at War 

President Barack Obama's poll ratings for national security are falling. As they should. The war in Libya increasingly looks like America's next geopolitical train wreck.
Hope for a quick rebel victory is now a distant dream. Western officials are talking about a military stalemate with no political solution in sight. NATO governments face the possibility of a long war -- or "kinetic military action," in Obama administration parlance.
The Western powers wax eloquent about saving civilian lives even as they sustain rather than resolve a civil war. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismisses proposals to intervene in Syria with the claim that President Bashar Assad is a "reformer." The president averts his eyes from Bahrain, where the Sunni monarchy has crushed Shia democracy protestors with the aid of Saudi Arabian troops.
The U.S. is turning Libyan operations over to NATO, but only America has the military power necessary for sustained operations. The administration wants Muammar Gaddafi out, but won't take the steps necessary to oust him. Now NATO is threatening to bomb the rebels if they violate human rights. And Great Britain is warning that it might prosecute defectors from the Gaddafi government even as it encourages defections from the Gaddafi government.
The administration wants to peacefully convince Iran and North Korea to eschew nuclear weapons. But the allies are bombing a country which voluntarily abandoned its nuclear weapons program.
This is a policy?

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