There has been a lot of spin over our time in Libya with all kind of charges levied against Obama. One idea that the Republicans tried to sell is that our aims in Libya were somehow "unclear" and that Obama had failed to effectively communicate the objectives.
Another is that he had created some kind of outrage by not discussing it with Congress first and of violating the War Powers Act of 1973.
Another rather trifling complaint in my opinion is that Obama lacks a "coherent doctrine." This is partly based om the idea that as Obama's response to the varied uprisings of the "Arab Spring" has been too varied. Supportive in Iraq, not so supportive in Bahrain, rhetorically supportive but not assisting in Egypt, etc.
There was also a charge given wide currency among the firebaggers that somehow Libya "is another Iraq.'
The first and fourth of these charges are already pretty clearly off base. There was nothing ever very unclear about the Libyan effort. Our participation was limited-though of primary importance. The goal was clearly to take out Gaddafi and that is exactly what has been done. Actually what's striking about Obama's Libya intervention is how clear it's goal was unlike so many of our previous interventions, Iraq first and foremost. The objectives there were numerous and shifting always a sign of incoherence.
This leads us to what I admitted above to finding a rather "trifling" complaint about Obama not having a doctrine, not Obama Doctrine. It seems that we reacted differently to each uprising in the Arab Spring but why is this a problem? Aren't doctrines overrated?
Seems to me that historically speaking, the original doctrine, the Monroe Doctrine was justified and vital and set a very important precedent in US foreign relations, but in recent years this whole idea of doctrines has been overdone. Not every President needs a doctrine though media pundits have come to feel that it is somehow now mandatory. Bush did have a clear doctrine but it was highly problematic-preemptive war, 'your either with us or the terrorists'.
So having a doctrine isn't necessarily a good thing: a bad policy is only worsened by sort of codifying it in a "doctrine."
More generally, there is a risk of simply overly dignifying what a President does on foreign policy. Obama has it right, if there is an Obama Doctrine it is agnosticism about Doctrines.
Seems to me for the most part all a doctrine can do is rigidify and constrain a President's possible policies. It't ignoring the messy way the world works beyond any attempt to decide in advance of events themselves.
As for the kvetching over not the War Resolutions Act, this is hypocrisy at its worse for the GOP anyway. They never agreed with this act in principle but now they wanted to selectively apply it for short term gain. When we did decide to get involved in Libya there was no time for a debating society in Congress. March 19, the Friday when it begun, we had about 48 hours tops to forestall the crushing of the Rebel city of Benghazi.
As for the claim of symmetry with Iraq, the facts couldn't be more different. Our assistance was requested by the rebels, as well as the Arab League-yes, it was a man bites dog moment. While Iraq was entered entirely unilaterally, this was undergone multilaterally, through the UN, and working with NATO.
As we noted above our objective was clear-not like in Iraq-and the objective has been achieved speedily.
While the firebaggers claim that liberals are hypocrites to approve the same policies we criticized with Bush, the reason we haven't is that Obama hasn't pursued the same policies. Certainly not in the case of Libya where every complaint I had of Iraq-no collaboration, unilateralism, done without regard to nation's people were not repeated here. So what you want about the Libyan war but it was handled with impeccable liberal criteria-multilateral. consensus building, respect for the Libyan people's will, etc.
Clearly the first and third charges are already proven false. O
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