No leadership on Libya

Obama's crafty but not smart

by Michael Graham
Tuesday, Mar. 22, 2011

Building on the success of “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?” Fox Television has begun production on a sure-fire hit: “Are You Smarter Than The President Of The United States?”

And in this show — everybody wins!

That’s because almost every American citizen — with the possible exception of the members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation — is smarter about Libya than Barack Obama

Really — you are, right now, more intelligent than the Smartest President Ever.

For example, would you launch a military attack in Libya without being able to answer the question: “Why am I attacking Libya?” No way.

But that’s just what Obama has done. Are we attacking Libya to get rid of kooky Col. Moammar Gadhafi? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says yes.

“We do believe that a final result of any negotiations would have to be the decision by [Gadhafi] to leave,” she told Reuters on Friday.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Carter Ham, who’s overseeing the action, both say “no.” They can see Gadhafi still being in power when this mission is over.

And Obama?

He’s playing soccer on the streets of Rio with some school kids. Apparently “My Pet Goat” hasn’t been translated into Portuguese.

“The international community rallied and said we have to stop any potential atrocities in Libya, and provided a broad mandate in addition to that specific task,” Obama said yesterday after arriving in Chile.

So it’s just a humanitarian mission. Obama says “no” regime change.

But wait — there’s more!

“I also have stated that it is U.S. policy that Gadhafi has to go,” he added. So we’re finally going to get rid of the terror-sponsoring SOB who’s killed hundreds of Americans in terrorist attacks, including the Lockerbie bombing. Right?

“We’ve got a wide range of tools in addition to our military efforts to support that policy,” Obama concluded.

So we’re just on a humanitarian mission that has nothing to do with toppling Gadhafi, except that it’s our policy to topple him, only we’re not going to use the military.

We’re only going to blow up stuff that won’t knock Gadhafi out of office? Terrific.

At this point, allow me to be the 3,749th opinion writer to point out that a policy which a) stops Gadhafi from committing atrocities against his people while b) leaving him in power to commit future atrocities is idiotic. It’s like saying, “We don’t want to catch the Boston Strangler, we just want to make sure he stays home watching TV for now.”

Some smart people believe that America standing aside and allowing Gadhafi to turn eastern Libya into the new Bosnia or Darfur would be a geopolitical disaster. They say it would undermine our allies and hurt America’s credibility across the Middle East.

Other smart people say Tripoli isn’t worth the blood of a single American airman, and we should leave the Libyans to have their civil war.

But nobody, other than the president, is saying both.

Rudy Giuliani, who knows a thing or two about leadership during crisis, told National Review yesterday that “if [Obama] thought that it would be in America’s national interest to remove Gadhafi, he should have already outlined steps two, three and four. It does not seem like he has done that.”

As for launching a no-fly zone and promising no ground forces, Giuliani notes, “I don’t know why he has to decide that right now except for political reasons. Strategically, you want Gadhafi thinking that we might use troops.”

What the president really wants people thinking is “Whatever happens in Libya, none of it is Obama’s fault.”