The email sent will contain a link to this article, the article title, and an article excerpt (if available). For security reasons, your IP address will also be included in the sent email.
Gene Lyons
March 30, 2011
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/barack_obama/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/03/30/obama_libya_air_strike_undoing_gene_lyons
Three things President Obama didn't do in his speech to the nation on Libya: He didn't predict the future, he didn't put Col. Moammar Gadhafi on a "Wanted: Dead or Alive" poster, and he didn't pronounce an "Obama Doctrine" for redeeming a fallen world through bombing.
To anybody who's been paying attention over the past 10 years, these were wise and necessary omissions. "To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq," Obama said. "Regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly $1 trillion. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya."
No, it's certainly not. To be even blunter, Libya itself is not worth it -- the reason U.S. presidents back to Nixon have tolerated the murdering SOB. Leftists condemning NATO's "colonialist" attempt to seize Libyan oilfields might ask themselves why, if that's the motive, it took so long. The country's oilfields were nationalized decades ago. No imaginable Libyan government would surrender ownership to British and Italian corporations currently operating them at great profit.
Return to Article