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A
Very Liberal Intervention
by Ross Douthat, NYWTimes
In its month-long crab walk toward
a military confrontation with Qaddafi, the Obama administration
has delivered a clinic in the liberal way of war.
Just a week ago, as the tide began to turn against the anti-Qaddafi
rebellion, Obama seemed determined
to keep the United States out of Libya’s civil strife. But it turns out
the president was willing to commit
America to intervention all along. He just wanted to make sure we were
doing it in the most multilateral,
least cowboyish fashion imaginable. Well put.
That much his administration has achieved.
In its opening phase, at least, our war in Libya looks like the beau
ideal of a liberal internationalist intervention.
It was blessed by the United Nations Security Council. It was endorsed
by the Arab League. It was pushed
by the diplomats at Hillary Clinton’s State Department, rather than the
military men at Robert Gates’s Pentagon.
Its humanitarian purpose is much clearer than its connection to
American national security. And it was initiated
not by the U.S. Marines or the Air Force, but by the fighter jets of
the French Republic.
This is an intervention straight from Bill Clinton’s 1990s playbook, in
other words, and a stark departure
from the Bush bastards' more unilateralist methods. There are no
“coalitions of the willing” here, no dismissive
references to “Old Europe,” no “you are with us or you are with the
terrorists.” Instead, the Obama White House
has shown exquisite deference to the very international institutions
and foreign governments that the Bush
bastards either steamrolled or ignored
In other words, he's doing it right.
As I said in the upcoming BCR 169, it's very possible that Obama, like Clinton, might get thru his war
without losing any American soldiers, sailors or pilots - and that will piss off the GOP - BIG time.
When Clinton clobbered Milosombitch in the nineties, the lack of dead soliders caused the vulgar Pigboy
to say, "If no lives were lost, was it worth going to war?" or some such horseshit, as tho "victory"
was defined by the number of new graves dug at Arlington.
Clinton lost no soldiers (I don't count Bush's Somalia debacle) and they screamed "amateur" at him.
Bush lost 5,000 or so, "but he knew what he was doing."
Now another "amateur" might tie Clinton with zero soldiers lost
and what will the Republican bastards say about him?
I don't know, but it'll probably include the word "nigger."