The strange thing about Juan Cole’s defense of the Libyan intervention is that he didn’t touch on any of my objections at all. I’m not a pacifist; I am not an anti-imperialist absolutist, and I never said that no social problems could be solved by military force. I’m not an isolationist, either. I’m not indifferent to human suffering in places like Benghazi. And I never said that the intervention was intended to take over Libyan oil fields. I said it was intended, in part, to keep those oil fields pumping diesel for Europe’s engines, but buying it is different from stealing it.
The reasons I object to intervening in Libya are:
1. It’s not our sphere of influence, or a country that is important for our national security.
2. Military intervention is expensive. We’re already looking at draconian budget cuts in state, local, and national government. I want us to be reducing our military commitments overseas, not increasing them.
3. Western intervention in the Islamic world has a tendency to cause blowback even when our goals are humanitarian and the lives we save are Muslim. We did not earn brownie points in Bosnia or Kosovo or Somalia, and we’re unlikely to earn them in Libya. Intervening will probably lesson our security, not increase it.
4. Libya has no history of democracy or even much history as a unified country. We don’t understand Libyan culture very well, and we don’t know who we’re dealing with. Will an opposition that is united against Gaddafi remain united once he’s gone? If not, who do we choose to support?
5. If airpower alone is insufficient to drive Gaddafi from power, then we may wind up arming anti-Gaddafi militias and create a civil war that destroys more lives and infrastructure than Gaddafi would have in putting down the rebellion.
6. Who is going to play daddy with any nascent democratic government in Tripoli? We’re not any good at that, and we’re busy at the moment.
I could actually go on, but the simplest answer is that I have no problem, really, in going in and kicking some dictator’s ass who is killing his own people. I have a problem with thinking that that will solve anything and not cause blowback and not cost money we don’t have and not get us bogged down in a country that really doesn’t concern us.
That’s why, once Obama gave the go-ahead, my critique changed immediately. Whereas, before I was arguing against intervening, after, I argued for blowing off the niceties and getting the bastard in Tripoli as soon as possible. Let’s not pretend that high principle drives our foreign policy. I don’t care about hypocrisy in foreign policy. Most hypocrisy only seems that way to people who don’t understand the stakes. We’re not lining up to intervene in Cote d’Ivoire or Sri Lanka or Myanmar. Libya really fit in the same category as far as U.S. foreign policy is concerned. That’s how I saw it. Others saw it as a message to Iran. How many more messages are we going to send to Iran? We’re running out of countries to invade to impress Iran. If we want to deal with Iran, then deal with them.
I’d be the first to admit that there are some dumb people on the left who take some really awful positions on certain issues, but most people that I know who oppose this intervention oppose it because it’s stupid. Obama promised us no stupid wars, and then he gave us one.
But, you know, that’s bygones. I thought it wasn’t in our national interests; the president disagrees. So, now I say that we need to go get Gaddafi and not waste time trying to placate an alliance of self-doubters. Do not try to topple him using a rag-tag group of bored teenagers. We don’t need to turn Libya into Somalia in order to save it.
And if anyone wants us to do regime change in some other country, my response is most likely going to be the same. It’s not our job or our responsibility. If someone else wants to do it, I don’t necessarily object and might even be willing to play a part. But we must stop looking to America to be the cop on the beat. John Boehner says we’re broke and that we need to take away granny’s pension. The Myanmar freedom fighters can call me when granny’s got her money back.