Mr. President: We Have to Press Ya on Libya ... How Could Ya?

POLITICS-So what could possibly be WORSE than former President George W. Bush actions in invading Iraq, unleashing civil havoc, risking regional conflict and infuriating Americans and the world?  How about current President Barack H. Obama REPEATING BUSH'S MISTAKE by using air power and military support to overthrow the leadership of Libya, unleashing civil havoc, risking regional conflict and infuriating Americans and the world? 

Yes, there are those who's rather swallow a bag of rusty nails than question our current President (just as there was a loyal 25% who backed former President Bush to the very end), but reality is a difficult and dangerous thing to avoid...especially if you claim to be open-minded and fair-minded (to which both conservatives and liberals should both aspire). 

Progressives such as GOP-bashing Ted Rall therefore deserve proper credit for calling out President Obama on a foreign policy nightmare that he, and he alone, created. 

Unlike former (and now overthrown and executed) Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, who constantly terrorized the region and his own people, former (and now overthrown and executed) Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi had made peace with the West and wanted to be our friend. 

In fact, Libya was one of the few examples of where former President Bush got it right--Gaddafi, who responsible for the horrible Lockerbie, Scotland bombing incident and a former instigator of worldwide terrorism, actually made a deal with the West to pay all restitutions, to acknowledge and eschew his role in terrorism, and to give up all efforts to create nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. 

Gaddafi saw what we did in Iraq, remembered that he'd crossed the U.S. and the West for decades, and sought to avoid a fight that he realized he would assuredly lose.  His nation was prosperous, and created opportunities for local and foreign residents to find jobs as an oil/gas-exporting nation, and Libya was on its way to being one of the few triumphs of the Iraq War. 

And then President Obama took Gaddafi out.  

Unlike Hussein of Iraq, who made it clear he was an ongoing threat to the West and to regional stability, Gaddafi made it clear that he was DONE being such a threat...but he was still taken out by President Obama. 

Ostensibly under the aegis of the Arab Spring, and with the "shining examples" of Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama (and his fawning and attention-diverting press) have transformed Libya into a hellhole where chaos rules, and foreign nationals such as those twenty-one Coptic Egyptians guilty only of looking for work were recently beheaded by a growing ISIS presence, with all the world to see. 

To make matters worse, President Obama probably misled Congress and might have ignored the Constitution in using American military and other resources in order to make this happen. 

And when Egyptian President al-Sisi, a Muslim, launched air strikes against the ISIS killers, this righteous action was actually opposed and critiqued by President Obama. 

But then this is the same President Obama that has more sympathy to former Egyptian President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood than to al-Sisi, and has his State Department more interested in playing the role of job creator to ISIS members  than in supporting our Jordanian and Kurdish allies at the front lines of the anti-ISIS fight. 

The ever-defending, throw-our-bodies-and-our-consciences-to-protect-Obama crowd might point out that there were no American casualties in the Libyan conflict, but both the Benghazi event (YES, that happened!) and the growing deaths of foreign workers and American contractors in that region suggest that such an apologist approach has no merit in a world where moral and intellectual honesty is in all-too-short supply. 

Which raises the question of whether we can keep blaming former President Bush for the world's problems--because at least Bush followed the advice of his then-Secretary of State (Colin Powell, who's remained too silent on the Libya situation) that if "you broke it, you bought it" and did whatever it took to restore Iraq to some semblance of stability. 

Which also raises the question of whether we can stop blaming conservative media and anyone who opposes President Obama's domestic or foreign policies, and his uncanny ability to surround himself with incompetent idiots and/or agenda-obsessed radicals. 

And which also raises the question of which universe former senior Obama adviser David Axelrod lives in when he proclaims how proud he is that the White House has gone six years in which there hasn't been a major scandal. 

So will it remain a "nothing to see here, move right along" scenario either locally or abroad, or will we have to wait for more havoc and death in Libya (and other unstable regions) to finally demand that the President and his team stop fighting Republicans more than terrorists, and start defending America and its Western ideals in areas that want those ideals defended and promoted? 

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The Shiite Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Yemen axis is no better than the Sunni al-Qaida-ISIS axis, but an Egyptian-Israeli-Jordanian-Kurdish axis is as vital and timely a force for America and the West to support in its efforts against their dangerous neighbors. 

So perhaps more of America can follow the example of Ted Rall, who never loses an opportunity to bash conservatives and the GOP, but who remains an intellectually honest liberal, in asking our President: "How could you, President Obama, do such a thing?" 

Not George W. Bush, who changed a threat in a Gaddafi-run Libya into a potential ally, but Barack H. Obama, is responsible for the mayhem in Libya and all the growing regional conflict that is spreading because of it. 

And let's not let that mayhem and conflict get any worse before we realize that it can't be ignored any longer...even if you still personally like our otherwise-charismatic President.

 

(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected]  He also does regular commentary on the MarkIsler Radio Show on AM 870,and co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.) 

-cw

 

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 15

Pub: Feb 20, 2015