Republicans are so stupid that even when they are trying to be funny they just come off as jerks. John Hawkins wants liberals to answer seven questions about President Obama’s decision to use military force in Libya. He tries to highlight areas of hypocrisy and double-standards, but he does so by ignoring evidence and smoothing over distinctions.
1) Isn’t this is a rush to war? There were 17 UN resolutions regarding Iraq, Bush talked about going to war for a full year before we actually invaded, and he received Congressional approval first. After all that, liberals STILL shouted that it was a “rush to war.” Meanwhile, Obama decided to bomb Libya in between making his Final Four picks and planning out a vacation to Brazil, probably because Hillary yelled at him. How about applying the same standards to Obama that you applied to Bush?
You see the obvious cheap shot in calling Obama’s long-planned state visit to Brazil a “vacation.” That’s not a promising start if Mr. Hawkins wants to be taken seriously. The appeal to the 17 UN resolutions concerning Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is also meaningless. How many of those resolutions pertained to the invasion of Iraq? You could argue, weakly, that one did, and it didn’t authorize force, just inspections. In reality, the UN never passed a single resolution authorizing force against Iraq in the post-Persian Gulf War period. The situation in Libya took on the form of an imminent threat, which is why Senators Graham (R-SC) and McCain (R-AZ) have accused the president of costing lives by dithering. Here is how National Security Advisor Tom Donilon described the immediate mission:
…the effort here and the core of United Nations Security Council 1973 was to take all necessary measures to protect citizens who are under threat and attack. And we were particularly focused on the threat at the city of Benghazi in eastern Libya. That city is a city of about 700,000 Libyans that had been the focus of the opposition to Qaddafi. Qaddafi had been threatening the city of Benghazi…
…we should undertake and succeed in the operation we’ve undertaken now, which is to protect civilians from an immediate threat — a city of 700,000 people that was under threat by Qaddafi forces, where he stated the he would show no mercy because they had defected from his regime and had declared themselves independent of his regime, and declared their desire for a new leadership.
You cannot fairly blame the president for both dithering and acting with too much haste. However, there has been no shortage of voices on the left who have accused the president of either not thinking things through or of taking on too much risk for too little promised reward. I have published numerous criciticms of this type. Josh Marshall provides another example. It’s not true that the president has escaped the critique of the left that he has acted rashly in committing us to act in Libya.
2) Is Obama invading Libya because Gaddafi insulted him? Liberals claimed George Bush invaded Iraq because Saddam tried to assassinate his father. Using that same line of thinking, could the notoriously thin-skinned Obama be bombing Libya because he’s still angry that Gaddafi once said this about him?
We fear that Obama will feel that, because he is black with an inferiority complex, this will make him behave worse than the whites. This will be a tragedy. We tell him to be proud of himself as a black and feel that all Africa is behind him because if he sticks to this inferiority complex he will have a worse foreign policy than the whites had in the past.
Obama doesn’t have much use for anyone who criticizes him. Even his spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright learned all about what the underside of a bus looks like after he dared to criticize Obama. Is that Obama’s real motivation? Hmmmmmmm, liberals?
In the formation of the first question, Mr. Hawkins suggested that Obama only authorized force because he was hectored by his Secretary of State. Now, in his second question, he suggests that Obama needed no outside prodding because his decision is little more than a petulant act of revenge. In truth, all the inside reporting that I’ve seen is in agreement that the president only authorized force reluctantly, and in the face of an imminent assault on the city of Benghazi. I have also not noted any particular strain of insecurity in the president. He seems to shrug off most criticism, although he can get testy with liberals who think he is insufficiently liberal. Your mileage may differ.
3) Is this a war for oil? What was it liberals kept saying over and over about Iraq? Oh yeah, it was “No blood for oil!” What was the rationale for claiming the war in Iraq was about oil? Iraq had oil; we were going to war there; so obviously it just MUST be about oil. That was it. So, Libya has oil and unlike Hussein, Gaddafi has been cooperative of late; so there’s no compelling reason for America to invade….except perhaps, to safeguard all that Texas T. flowing beneath the sand. So, when do we have liberals in the streets shouting “No blood for oil?”
It’s funny that Mr. Hawkins should mention this criticism. It’s not like prominent Democrats haven’t acknowledged that oil is the main motivating factor that makes this humanitarian crisis different from others where we took no action.
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said he agreed with President Obama’s decision to launch, along with allies, attacks against Libya and its leader, Moammar Gadhafi. But Markey said the attacks were primarily motivated by oil.
“We are in Libya because of oil,” Markey said on MSNBC. “It all goes back to the 5 million barrels of oil we import from OPEC on a daily basis.”
Rep. Markey supports the use of force, but Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) says launching strikes without Congressional authorization is an impeachable offense. Meanwhile, Michael Moore is on a Twitter rampage against the president. What’s notable is not the lack of criticism on the left, but the lack of support. But, even if this action is motivated largely by the need for Libyan oil, it also has a legitimate humanitarian component.
4) Where are the massive protests? Can’t you just see it? The Communist Party, Code Pink, the black bloc, and the free Mumia wackjobs all joining together with the Tea Party to protest Obama. Wouldn’t that be fun? I mean personally, I’ve been waiting for years to wear a “No Blood For Oil” sign while I carry around a giant puppet head. Someone call the commies and union members who organize all these hippie shindigs for the Left and let’s do this thing!
At least Mr. Hawkins acknowledges that there were “massive protests” against the war in Iraq. That’s more than the national media ever did. I wonder, though, who is this “black bloc” of which he speaks, I went to several anti-war protests and I never encountered the “black bloc.” I did talk to Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) at one Washington protest. He’s black. Maybe he is who Mr. Hawkins is referring to. There are many reasons why the left has not (yet) organized any massive protests against the military action in Libya, but one of the most important is that that those actions were authorized by the United Nations Security Council.
5) Shouldn’t we have tried to talk it out with Gaddafi instead? I thought that the Muslim world loves and respects America since Barack Obama became President? So, why not try to talk it out with Gaddaffi? Perhaps Obama should have been humble, realized he didn’t have all the answers, and then he could have had a conversation with Gaddafi instead of threatening him? Maybe he should have considered the possibility that Libya’s culture is a little different than ours. Had he perhaps met with Gaddafi and bowed to him to show his respect, this could have probably been worked out without violence. Oh, why, why must we be so arrogant and so ignorant of other nations’ rich cultural traditions, which in Libya apparently consist of murdering everyone who opposes you?
The president addressed this in his remarks in Brasilia (via email):
“This is not an outcome that the United States or any of our partners sought. Even yesterday, the international community offered Muammar Qaddafi the opportunity to pursue an immediate cease-fire, one that stopped the violence against civilians and the advances of Qaddafi’s forces. But despite the hollow words of his government, he has ignored that opportunity. His attacks on his own people have continued. His forces have been on the move. And the danger faced by the people of Libya has grown…
…we cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy, and his forces step up their assaults on cities like Benghazi and Misurata, where innocent men and women face brutality and death at the hands of their own government.
So, no, we couldn’t just talk it out with him. Our choices were do stand by while he bombarded his cities or to intervene. Talking wasn’t working. That doesn’t mean that intervening was in our national interests. And one reason why it may not be in our interests is spelled out in today’s New York Times, which describes the tribal rivalries that will complicate any post-Gaddafi political environment in Libya. In other words, we haven’t fully appreciated Libya’s unique culture and how it might make our intervention a frustrating quagmire. Sound familiar?
6) Aren’t we just starting a cycle of violence by bombing Libya? You know what they say, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind!” We drop bombs on them, they get angry, and next thing you know, they turn into terrorists to get us back! That was what we heard from the Left over and over during the Bush years, wasn’t it? That we were creating terrorists?
That’s why liberals like Richard Gere suggested brilliant strategies like this to deal with Al-Qaeda:
In a situation like this, of course you identify with everyone who’s suffering. (But we must also think about) the terrorists who are creating such horrible future lives for themselves because of the negativity of this karma. It’s all of our jobs to keep our minds as expansive as possible. If you can see (the terrorists) as a relative who’s dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine, and the medicine is love and compassion. There’s nothing better.
Maybe instead of bombing Libya, Obama needs to engage in a little more love and compassion by hugging Gaddafi into submission!
That the invasion of Iraq increased the threat of terrorism was agreed upon both by our own National Intelligence Estimate and by Britain’s former M15 chief. The left was right about Iraq. As silly as Richard Gere sounds, we’d have been better off and richer if we’d all flown over to Iraq and given Saddam Hussein a giant hug. But that’s because the only terrorism Saddam Hussein was involved with was directed against his own people and the people of Israel (in the form of cash rewards to the families of suicide bombers). Invading Iraq did nothing to diminish al-Qaeda and gave a giant recruitment boost to anti-Western radical Islamist groups.
You don’t win arguments by ignoring your own faults and pointing to the most radical voice on the other side of the debate. Richard Gere is not representative of the left.
7) Isn’t Barack Obama a chickenhawk? Barack Obama has never served in the military; yet he just decided to engage in a “war of choice” in Libya. Even if you chalk up Iraq and Afghanistan to Obama cleaning up after Bush, this one is all on him. If American soliders die, it’s because Obama chose to put them in harm’s way. If Libyan civilians are killed by American weapons, it’s because Barack Obama gave the order to attack. So, can we all agree that Barack Obama is a squawking, yellow bellied chickenhawk?
No one ever asked Barack Obama to serve. No one served in his place. He never agreed to serve and then didn’t fulfill his obligations. He didn’t get five deferments from a war he claimed to support. And he isn’t strutting around like a gunslinger while calling his political opponents’ patriotism into question. So, no, the president isn’t a chickenhawk. President Bush and Dick Cheney are chickenhawks and will remain so until their dying days.
In summary, Mr. Hawkins attempted to expose the left for inconsistency and hypocrisy but he failed. The left has voiced many of the same concerns about military action that they voiced about invading Iraq. The situations are not exactly analogous, however, so the response is different. I think that in addition to trying to provide a few laughs, Mr. Hawkins was trying to find some measure of vindication for Bush’s policies. He did not succeed.
The left is skeptical of, if not outright opposed, to the president’s decision to embroil us Libya’s civil war. The left is not rethinking its opposition to Bush and Cheney’s excellent adventure in Mesopotamia. The president better hope that the left isn’t reconsidering their vote for him.
