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Obama’s Unconvincing Case on Libya
President Obama failed to make the case for intervention in Libya. He never addressed the issue of his warmaking powers. He failed to distinguish between Libya and other cases like it, such as Syria, Yemen, or Bahrain. And he didn’t adequately address the question of the overextension of our military, and the distraction from the crying needs that face this country.![](/sites/commondreams.org/files/imce-images/libya_peace_obama.jpg "The promises of rebels -- as shown here -- should be met with the same skepticism as the rationale for war offered by the Obama administration. "If the Pentagon is going to go on bombing raids every time the flow of commerce is threatened," writes Rothschild, "then we can expect perpetual war."")
The promises of rebels -- as shown here -- should be met with the same skepticism as the rationale for war offered by the Obama administration. "If the Pentagon is going to go on bombing raids every time the flow of commerce is threatened," writes Rothschild, "then we can expect perpetual war."
Instead, he stressed the humanitarian justification for the action, using the word “massacre” four times and oddly echoing George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice’s phraseology about the “mushroom cloud.”
Whereas they said they couldn’t wait for the “smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” Obama said he refuses “to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action."
Like Bush, Obama spun a justification for preemptive or preventive war, a dangerous doctrine which future presidents may invoke any time they wish.
Nor did Obama forswear his predecessor’s unilateralism.
“I will never hesitate to use our military swiftly, decisively, and unilaterally when necessary to defend our people, our homeland, our allies, and our core interests,” Obama said.
He actually used the military so swiftly he didn’t bother with Congress or the Constitution.
On top of defending “our people, our homeland, our allies, and our core interests,” Obama added other occasions for intervention “when our safety is not directly threatened, but our interests and our values are.” (Though by “interests” here he must mean something less than “core interests,” which were in his primary list.) In this secondary list, he lumped everything in from “preventing genocide” to “ensuring regional security” and “maintaining the flow of commerce.”
If the Pentagon is going to go on bombing raids every time the flow of commerce is threatened, then we can expect perpetual war.
Obama tried to fob off the obligations such a doctrine imposes by amending JFK’s “pay any price”/ “bear any burden” rhetoric. Now it’s not the United States that will do all the paying and bearing; our allies are going to have to “bear their share of the burden and pay their share of the costs,” Obama said.
But the fact remains that his expansive doctrine will be enormously costly and burdensome to the United States.
Our government always has money for war; never the money for universal health care or for wiping out poverty or for ensuring full employment.
And when Obama said, in the midst of running three wars, that “we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world’s many challenges,” he must have been kidding.
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Show All"Maintaining the flow of commerce" is, of course, the principal motivation here, flow being the entirely appropriate term.
Reuters reporting that the rebels will start selling oil from the territory they control (the UN having cleverly banned sales through Gadaffi's corportation only).
Obama: "...Our core interests."
And just what might those be? What corporations are pulling the strings? We've been waiting to hear about it for over two years now, Mr. President, and you're still playing the same games GWB did.
Right you are jimmyaj. In Obama's lexicon (and most politicians') "our core interests' means our corporations interests.
Anyone who sees a problem with enriching the top 2% at the expense of the rest of us is obviously divisive, engaging in class warfare, and not a team player. The corporations and rich should not pay taxes because our interests are exactly like theirs, and when they prosper, so do we. Every yacht, every private plane, every mansion, every estate in the Bahamas, every billion dollars held in private hands must be helping each and every one of us .... somehow.
Contrast the phrase "shared sacrifice". That applies only to schoolchildren , the sick, the elderly, municipal workers such as teachers, police, firefighters, nurses and other such parasites on the national treasury. It does not apply to hedge fund managers, bankers, CEOs, commodity and currency speculators, and military profiteers whose activities add so much to our well-being.
I think it is past time that, we the people, start discussing the formation of a new government.
This government is not meeting the requirements of a free, fair, and just system.
Our constitution was a revolutionary document in the time it was made, but the world has grown, and the constitution is out of date.
I know this is not news, but the need for a new governmental system should be apparent.
But what's a Gringo to do? Most of us are Gringos because our parents were Gringos and after we were born, we remained alive. That set of facts does not deprive us of our human rights or our obligations to try to live as humans among humans.
Most of us have never owned slaves or profited from slave ownership, nor have killed indigenous people. Many of our ancestors were serfs or starving during slavery or during the mass displacement of native peoples. In every ethnic group some have suffered and some have committed atrocious acts. Repeatedly calling people Gringos and implying that we have no right to think and act is simply a waste of time, except that it allows you to express some anger.
But millions of Gringos are here to stay and some of us refuse to be paralyzed by collective guilt for the sins that have been committed by others. It would be counterproductive to desist from politics when we are in the country that is now the biggest military power in the world and is slaughtering so many RIGHT NOW. All we can to is to stand for justice and for righting the wrongs that have been committed and continue to be committed.
No, you are not a Gringo because your parents were white. No, you are not a persecuted victim as a result of being white.
You are saying that we should "stand for justice and for righting the wrongs that have been committed and continue to be committed." Yet when asked to do that, you hear it as persecution of white people. That is a thinking process, a racist thinking process - voluntary, and not dependent upon or caused by your skin color, and not imposed on you by someone else.
No one is making you feel guilty. If you do feel guilty, and apparently you do, that is coming from you and has nothing to so with what white people did in the past, but rather with your mindset right now here today.. This is an internal conflict - and argument you are having with yourself - and you are projecting that out onto others. That is an important component of racism - white people projecting their own internal turmoil onto scapegoats, people of color.
This is an intriguing statement: "some of us refuse to be paralyzed by collective guilt for the sins that have been committed by others." How would you be "paralyzed?" How is learning about and acknowledging the history of racism in the US "collective guilt?"
Why are we to assume that it is the other person who is "expressing anger" when clearly you are expressing anger here? Notice the double standard? That is racism. You can identify as a Gringo rather than as a unique human being, you can take offense, you can feel persecuted, you can get angry. But the native person cannot. Can you see that?
I have no anger against readbetween. Boredom maybe, because too often her responses have no content other than calling the commenter a gringo and implying that therefore, and because of that alone, anything they say is without merit.
"...learning about and acknowledging the history of racism...' is not what I object to. If you had been reading my posts over the years, you would see that I agree with you on that. I object to the implication that because of that history, anyone who is white is ineligible to take part in struggles for peace and justice. I would prefer if ideas were discussed on their merits, not through personal attacks.
Impeach Neocon war criminal Barack Obama!
Disappointing as he is, I wouldn't trade him for Biden
ezeflyer,
...and you will continue to get screwed and you will continue to whines and bitch here till the cows come home. Good Luck :-)
People should've been able to see right away that Obama would screw them and this country on the whole just about as much as G. W. Bush did. It shows that the majority of Americans either are quite naive, or have a stupid, vicious streak in them. Which is it?
President Obama very clearly stated the case on Libya. Basically, I'm opposed to war but, sadly, sometimes exception has to be made. Sorry to see so many people who never seem to satisfied with anything government does. Pox on you.
FuturePerfect,
Of course, we are ether too stupid and never satisfied. Are you satisfied with all the accomplishment so far?
I hope you or your love ones never encounter cancer, home forecloses, jobless. You may be retired with comfortable saving. Watch it! When disaster strikes, they come in a small increment and soon becomes unmanageable. When you see your saving, evaporate you will thinks back and understand why these stupid people never seem to satisfied with anything.
I feel like this article pointed out a tree or 2, but mainly described the forest.
Why bother making a convincing case?
The US finance, real estate, investment sector is corrupt . . . but bailed out and allowed to continue cheating.
They're lying about the BP mess in the Gulf, about the radioactivity from Fukushima, about casualties in Afghanistan, about torture and war crimes . . .
There is no further need for the US boss to go through the motions. They can commit any crimes, any atrocities . . . and the 300 million US slaves will submit, comply, obey.
US is dead.
Oh, stop acting as if the "media" are doing their job. Piers Morgan and two doofus reporters went on and on last night about the woman crying rape in Tripoli. Maybe she was raped. But the spin drones were pushing it as if it justified regime change.
Obama does not surprise. Obama does not deviate from the script. Obama was accurately pegged as corporate America's neo-liberal servant by Adolph Reed years before he became president. I'm not disappointed in Obama because it was clear he never meant to deliver.
What makes me wretch in disgust, however, is his blatant, shameless hypocrisy.
As Obama engineers hundreds of deaths green-lighting drone strike after drone strike in Pakistan, as Obama remains mute and complicit regarding the Saudi invasion of Bahrain and their slaughter of peaceful demonstrators, as Obama rubber-stamps the right-wing military coup and the resulting atrocities in Honduras, as he gives his seal of approval to the dismemberment and slaughter of malnourished Afghani children and their impoverished families with Special Op night raids and helicopter gunships and Predator rocket volleys at 80 grand a pop, he simultaneously appears before the nation and the world and astonishingly claims that he has ordered 100+ Tomahawk missiles be rained down on the people of Libya BECAUSE HE IS DEFENDING THEM. Obama is bombing the Libyan people, he says, IN ORDER TO SAVE THEM. And in the land of apple pie and the morally lobotomized, the sheep clap on cue.
Good thing we voted for Obama -on YOUR advice- eh, Matt?
Damned glad I didn't.
Now, whatever happens, at least I know that I'm smarter and braver than you.
Feels good.
Of course we had to go to war. Citizens have subsidized food, inexpensive housing, free medical care and education. Outrageous.
Where are the Hope and Changers and "lesser evil" folks now. Both parties serve the same masters, and it is not the voters. Remember that.
THE ISRAELI CONNECTION
On Friday, February 18, 2011, 14 of the total 15 members of the UN Security
Council voted to support a proposal to condemn the State of Israel for
its actions.
One nation, the US, vetoed this action.
There were no absentions.
While the US attained its immediate goals of protecting its client state
and defeating UN condemnation, it was clear that the US (and Israel)
were isolated in the international community. (Excepting the US and
Israel itself,of course.)
To avert attention from this, the US (and Israel) needed a fearsome
and beatable enemy against whom they could demonstrate their
benign and magnanimous role worldwide to spread "democracy","freedom"
and protect lives. The enemy who fit the bill was a Muslim.
And so, the huge role that the US had played to encourage violence
in the Arab-Israeli conflict, to support slaughter by Israelis, to support
Israeli flaunting of international law, to encourage past and current
ethnic cleansing would be hidden. Instead, we are fed reports of how
marvelous US airpower is devestating a current tyrant. (Note that
the US could have selected from a myriad of other powers but many of
them are supported heavily by the US.)
To accomplish these magnificent acts of US international benevolence,
the US used 15 members of NATO. Unlike UN members, NATO members
are committed to provide soldiers but must follow US military command and
strategy. (In the Kosovo War under the Clinton Administration,1999,
the US military had to check off with 19 other NATO members for
approval before actions. That requirement was ended. See:historian Gabriel
Kolko, THE WORLD IN CRISIS, Pluto Press, 2009, paperback,Chapter 3).
These realities are not permissable to discuss.in public discourse.
Our focus is to be on US magnanimity in saving the world. That is the
script and woe betide he/she who fails to follow it.
email:peterloeb@yahoo.com
Obama is doing just what he said he would not do when campaigning. The left has the president it deserves for falling in love with an unsavory character.
We're already morphing from air support to something else: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/world/africa/30diplo.html.
At least the word "debate" is in that headline, although we've all seen such "debates" before...
Chuckwallah (see below) I do not have to read the Diary of Anne Frank because my dad survived twelve years of Nazi prisons and concentration camps, the second including Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz-Monowitz. We, his wife and children saved the lives of several Jewish friends, one of which is still alive in Kibbutz Yakum Israel.For that my mom spent nine months in the concentration camp of Vught. Your equation of Kadaffi = Hitler is a vile insult not only to my dad and mom who were political activists but to the millions of children that were not. Your self-proclaimed faux humanity stinks to high heaven.
You are incapable of understanding the difference. If you did not oppose Kadaffi in Libya you were not persecuted and gassed. When you were a Jew in Nazi Germany it did not matter what your political views were. Even if you loved Hitler, that meant nothing because off you went to the crematoria in Poland. You almost make me vomit.
World War 2 was not a humanitarian action and neither is Obama's war in Libya. He is killing armed thugs on only one side. That is not humanitarian. That is taking sides in a civil war. If he thought that bombing and strafing and tomahawking was necessary he should bomb, strafe, and tomahawk both sides to a cease-fire. That, in my book is humanitarian. Obama's war is just another "normal" exercise of power.
rat4, you are right. Obama's shallowness was there to be seen before Nov 08. There was another choice, but few people were aware of it: the Greens ran Cynthia McKinney, former GA congresswoman of great character, wisdom & guts. She was the best one going. The one positive thing about O's election, that we showed that we could elect a black for President, would have been trumped by McKinney's election: both black and female!