Our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president has gotten things badly wrong. By demanding Moammar Khadafy's ouster while restricting US military force to the more limited objective of protecting innocent civilians, President Obama has set himself up for massive strategic failure.
Yet America is now committed. Khadafy won't care that he's being bombed for "humanitarian" rather than "regime change" reasons; it is absolutely certain that, once able, he'll retaliate against those doing his forces mortal harm. If he keeps power over any significant part of Libya, he'll likely return to international terrorism, as he has already threatened. He may also resume his quest for nuclear weapons -- and this time we'll have no hope of negotiating him out of it as we did in 2003-04.
Obama is hypersensitive to the Vietnam analogy -- arguing, for example, as he authorized a US "surge" in Afghanistan in 2009 that it is not another Vietnam.
Of course, Vietnam became a "quagmire" because of US unwillingness to persevere to reach our legitimate objectives. Obama entirely ignored the critical point that Gen. Creighton Abrams' strategy had placed us on the path to victory in Vietnam, and that it was a failure of American will, not battlefield defeat, that humbled us there.
And just so is Libya now increasingly a "quagmire" -- because Obama's decision to intervene was perilously late and limited, and later compounded by his mistake in drastically curtailing US strike missions. Two immediate steps are required to prevent the stalemate from becoming permanent.
First, we must reverse course immediately and declare regime change to be our military objective, followed by substantial airstrikes against Khadafy's military forces, whether or not they are imminently threatening civilians. Even now, US airpower should be intimidating enough to shatter the regime, and dramatically close the firepower disparity on the ground to permit an opposition victory.
Our NATO allies will welcome our return to active strike missions. So too will the Arab League, whose leaders must be appalled at that Obama and NATO are risking failure, thus risking an armed and dangerous Khadafy remaining in power in their back yard. (For those who care, Security Council Resolution 1973's authorization of force to protect Libyan civilians is so vague it can easily justify Khadafy's overthrow: What better way to protect those civilians?)
Second, because Libya's opposition leadership is still inchoate at best, we must identify anti-Khadafy figures who are pro-Western and find ways, overt or covert, to strengthen their hands. This will help both in opposing Khadafy today, and in any post-Khadafy government. Without confidence in the soundness of the opposition leaders, there is no justification for NATO supplying even light weapons, whose ultimate destination we can only guess. Failing to identify reliable leaders now will make any post-Khadafy regime, already problematic, potentially even more dangerous.
Thus far, however, Obama cant bring himself to act. Instead, he contends that Khadafy is being "squeezed" in other ways, most notably that his regime is running out of money -- an ironic concern for a president who acts as though no such constraints apply to him.
It is similarly troubling that Obama could say, as he did last week, "I think over the long term, Khadafy will go, and we will be successful." There is no better road to "quagmire" than to see Khadafy's departure as a "long term" eventuality, before which he can cause incalculable damage and destruction, both within Libya and internationally through returning to terrorism.
Obamas Quagmire Leadership and the Libya War
What caught my eye is when Bolton pointed out the difference between attacking Libya for humanitarian reasons and attacking libya with the intention of fostering genuine regime change. So far what we have done is basically bomb Libya for a few days and retreat giving the brunt of the responsibility to the Europeans who don;t appear to be able to do much.If there's anything this conflict demonstrates is how indispensable the US is in terms of maintaining international security. Declinist Pundits may hail the "Post American World" but as the history of declinism shows the notion that the United States is in decline is largely false and not rooted n hard evidence. to the extent that it is true it can be reversed(for example improvements in education).
By making the objective protection of Libyan civilians and not regime change and showing an unwillingness to do what is necessary Obama is essentially guaranteeing that Libya will retaliate by resorting to Terror(as it has in the past) not to mention the very real risk that Libya could restart their WMD programs as they feel threatened.
Furthermore I'd like to add that this war is in no way comparable to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.Legally and multilaterally speaking OIF was far more defensible compared to our current intervention in Libya.
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