Opinion> Roger Simon> Obama Goes For The War Trifecta

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Obama Goes for the War Trifecta

Iraq, and Afghanistan and Libya — oh, my. Three wars at once! Message to the world: Look upon our might and tremble.

President Barack Obama has invented his own definition of triangulation: It now means stretching our military resources between three separate wars.

And the cost of our new war in Libya, estimated by some to be $100 million per day? Forgedda about it. Ain't we the richest, most prosperous nation on the earth? Well, actually, we aren't. But we will be again someday! (If we could just stop fighting these wars.)

President Obama inherited the first two wars he is fighting. But Libya is all his. True, the White House does not want to call it a war, and much of the mainstream media have gone along.

Watching the "NBC Nightly News" the other day, I heard Libya called a "military action." Sure it is. Just like Korea was a "police action." Some 33,700 Americans lost their lives fighting in Korea, and I am sure it seemed like a war to them.

But President Obama cannot admit that we are fighting a war because candidate Obama said in 2007, "The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,"

But Obama has now launched such an attack even though the civil war in Libya clearly does not involve a threat to America. That's OK, however, the White House says, because Libya is not a real war. It may walk like a duck and talk like a duck, but it is not a duck. (Let's just hope it doesn't turn out to be a turkey.)

"This is a limited — in terms of scope, duration and task — operation, which does fall in the president's authorities," says Tom Donilon, Obama's national security advisor.

Congress is now whining about this — Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, says this "would appear on its face to be an impeachable offense" — but Congress will do nothing. Congress has not stood up for its constitutional authority to declare war since World War II, and it is not about to stand up on its hind legs now.

In Egypt, we saw hundreds of thousands of civilians throng the streets. The police and military joined them, and thus a dictator was toppled.

In Libya we have not seen this. We have seen small bands of young men equipped with automatic weapons who seem to enjoy firing them into the air for the news cameras. (Personally, I would advise the rebels to save their ammunition.)

Who are the rebels? Who is arming them? What is their agenda? What kind of government — democratic, religious fundamentalist, terrorist — will replace Moammar Gadhafi? We do not know. Those parts of Operation Odyssey Dawn — the first military operation named after a stripper, as David Letterman dryly put it — are not specified.

To an American electorate who thought Obama might become the next Franklin Roosevelt, Obama seems on his way to becoming the next Teddy Roosevelt. Obama launches a war and then takes off to see the Andes! Bully, very bully! (Though Teddy Roosevelt, who unabashedly loved the adrenalin of war, never presided over one as president. And he won the Nobel Prize in 1906 for negotiating a peace treaty between Russia and Japan, becoming the first American to win a Nobel in any category.)

President Obama already has his Nobel, so I guess he doesn't have to worry about the difficult task of peace treaties. Instead, he is going for the trifecta: military victories in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

You know how often trifectas pay off? Not often. But if Obama pulls this off, he enters the history books as a three-time winner.

I sure hope he is stopping at three, anyway.

The president has assured us that no U.S. ground forces will fight in Libya (I guess only our air forces are expendable), but we must get rid of Gadhafi, though we are not targeting Gadhafi. After all, Gadhafi is a dictator who is shooting his own civilian population. Just like the dictator in Bahrain is shooting his own civilian population. But we are not going to send any jets over Bahrain.

Why not? National Security Advisor Donilon once again provides the answer: "Bahrain is a very different case. There's no — there's not a comparison between Bahrain and Libya. Bahrain has been a longtime ally of the United States of America and a longtime partner."

Oh, well, now I get it. If you are a longtime partner of the United States, you can shoot down your people in the streets like dogs. But if you are not a longtime partner, we will come and bomb you.

Sort of encourages countries to become our longtime partners, doesn't it?

And you thought our foreign policy didn't make sense.

To find out more about Roger Simon, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Comments

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Well Mr. Simon, I finally find agreement with you. As a self described conservative, it hasn't been easy to find common ground. In this piece you ask many of the right questions and find the correct answers. I've been a tepid supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I can see the possibility of good coming out of those actions, but the reasoning for those actions is questionable.
With Afghanistan, we had more or less a duty to invade in defense of attack. I don't know that we should have stayed once the political and military structures were fairly well destroyed. I think it would have been best to pack up and leave with the warning that further state aggression or state supported aggression would result in further destruction.
Iraq is a whole different story so far as the start of it. At the outset I understood that our government knew more about the situation there than I did and that all information would not be available to the common man. I gave Bush a pass on that very notion. But nation building ought not to be a goal of the U.S. As much as I'd like the rest of the countries of this world to adopt very similar constitutions to our own, I cannot argue that Iraq under a dictator or as a Constitutional Republic is any of our business (or that a dictatorship is necessarily a threat to us). Removing the threat of Saddam with possible WMD may have been a worthy goal, but I question the method. Perhaps this one may turn out well in the end. Maybe Iraq will become much more stable, maybe “democracy” will flourish with positive result, maybe the Kurds, the Shiites, and the Sunnis will find that they can live peacefully together. One can hope.
Now we have Libya. Sure our President made clear weeks before the attacks that he wanted Gadhafi to leave. But I wouldn't have taken that as a threat under penalty of attack if I were Gadhafi. As we all know by now, Gadhafi isn't known for his vision, rationality, or grasp on reality. I think it would have been far more proper if Obama was going to demand he leave, that he had done it privately. Have the phone lines been down? I've no idea if Gadhafi could have been persuaded to step aside if treated respectfully. I would have guessed though that a world press reported call for his demise would only harden such a man.
Oddly enough, the only statement I ever recall hearing from the mouth of Gadhafi that seems rational is what he asked President Obama (and I paraphrase)…What would you do if your cities were under attack? How would you respond? I hope we never find out his answer.
The U.N. voted in favor of protection of the civilian Libyans. Great, fine. I don't like the U.N.; I don't think it's wise to allow “world opinion” to determine U.S. policy. But Obama apparently needed someone's approval and he got it. The first story I saw on the matter described a French fighter taking out some undetermined military ground equipment assumed loyal to Gadhafi's forces. The headline to the story spoke of a no-fly zone implementation. How does bombing tanks and armored vehicles and such qualify as implementing a no-fly zone? Only the first red flag. This action is clearly not solely for the purpose of securing the skies!
I'm still waiting for a true justification of action. Considering the “rebels” in many cases are well armed and aggressive with those arms they cannot be considered “innocent civilians” when attacked by Gadhafi's forces. If our forces are protecting them from Gadhafi, then we have clearly chosen sides and therefore are clearly participating in the overthrow or attempted overthrow of another nation's government. What is the basis? How do we justify such actions? Is Gadhafi a bad guy? Sure, no argument here. Maybe Gadhafi thinks our President is a bad guy. Should Gadhafi go after Obamba? There needs to be more reason.
It is clear that the flow of oil is one important reason that our European friends are upset. While Europe is the prime buyer of Libyan oil, our fuel costs will go up too if Europe has to purchase elsewhere. Liberals everywhere claimed with indignant ire that the Iraq war was about oil. Surely this cannot be the reasoning in Libya. Has the government of Libya attacked another sovereign nation? News to me if so.
As of today, barring more intense interference from coalition forces, Gadhafi's forces look well prepared to put down this revolt. Without air superiority, with reduced heavy artillery, it will take longer. With the “rebels” re-energized with coalition support, hope of victory has been restored for now. Smaller arms in the cities will determine the winner barring outside mediation or ground forces. I suspect many more will die as a result as would have if the situation had been allowed to play out entirely internally. So, more deaths equal “humanitarian” aid, a humanitarian mission? My book reads differently.

Comment: #1
Posted by: LF
Wed Mar 23, 2011 9:03 PM