I feel very similarly to Kevin Drum. I’m not sure that I’d go so far as to say that I trust Obama’s judgment over my own, though. On political matters, yes. On whether to intervene in Libya? Not so much. It’s true that he has access to intelligence reports and that he talks first hand to world leaders, and that means he is more informed and better able to make these types of decisions than I am. But if you gave me access to the same information, I’m pretty sure I would trust my own judgment over anyone else’s, including the president’s. Even without all the information, I can say pretty confidently that the president made a gut-call on Libya. He had to make a decision quickly, and he didn’t have time to game everything out or fully figure out what the end game was going to look like. I’d call it a reckless gamble, except that the nature of the decision didn’t allow for a more measured alternative.
In such a situation, I would not commit the United States to any political outcome in a foreign country. I would err on the side of doing nothing if I couldn’t satisfy myself that I understood what exactly needed to be accomplished and how that was going to get done. Obama gambled instead. He gambled that we can get Gaddafi out of power without ground forces and that we can sustain the rebellion without getting hopelessly entangled. He did it because the stark choice staring him in the face was to do something or watch Gaddafi crush the democratic aspirations of an oppressed people. It wasn’t an easy choice, and I respect that. But I’m not deferring to his judgment. I think he got it wrong. And I am just hoping that he can pull a rabbit out of a hat and get Gaddafi to go without using ground forces or getting us hopelessly entangled in Libya’s political future.
