All Hail President Obushama!!

Ok, I am being unfair to President Bush. He, after all, was a pretty good President for about seven of his eight years--his last year or so he went AWOL, allowed the big spenders to "stimulate" the economy into a near depression, and, hence, allow the calamity known as Obama to become President.

Now to Libya.  Qaddafi is a gangster.  Anybody not know that?  Well, it seems the international left didn't know that until a few weeks ago.  Qaddafi was regularly feted at "Non-Aligned" summits, and praised by the left as a paragon of anti-imperialist virtue. He was a firm ally of the most extreme elements of the PLO and other radical "Palestinian" organizations; he hosted terror training camps in Libya which were attended by the various lefty terror riff-raff of the 1970s and 1980s, including ETA, IRA, and the Red Army; he preened and paraded all over the international stage; was an ally of the USSR, Castro, and all the other members of the Evil Empire; blew up PAA103; and made little secret of his desire to develop a nuclear weapon capability.  He bought himself supporters, such as Louis Farrakhan and others, including academics and politicians.

With the exception of Maggie Thatcher, the rest of the Euros were terrified of him and worked to prevent the United States from taking serious actions against him. When Reagan launched his airstrikes on Libya, the French and the Spanish made sure the US bombers could not use their airspace.  Only after the US liberated Iraq from Saddam, pulling the old bastard out of a spider hole, did Qaddafi suddenly decide to give up his nuclear program, and stop supporting international terror. He turned on Al Qaeda and became just another aging reprobate out to make some money from oil companies selling to the European market (very little goes to the US).  The French and Russians were happy to sell him weapons and to collect large sums of petrodollars from him.

Now, suddenly, he's a threat? To whom? To his own people?  That's been the story since 1969, what else is new?  What's new is that the left has decided to go with the "Arab street."  They supported the "street" against the old farts running Tunisia and Egypt, and now find they cannot not support the "street" against Qaddafi.  The problem here is that Qaddafi is not Zine El Abidine Ben Ali or Hosni Mubarak.  He is a brutal and scrappy tribal chief who has nowhere to run, and has lots of money, men, and guns.  He will fight and he doesn't give a damn whom he kills.  Neither the Tunisian nor the Egyptian had the stomach to turn the military on their own people. No problem there with Qaddafi.

The western mostly lefty elites have been in a tizzy.  They want Qaddafi out; all of sudden their hero has feet of clay and is, well, an embarrassment.  But, alas!  Europe is a mighty rhetorical giant, but a military midget.  The Euros, for shame, need good ol' trigger happy cowboy firepower, the very same one they deride every day for having brought freedom to Iraq and trying to do the same in Afghanistan.  Enter stage left, our dimwitted President and Secretary of State. We will do the Euros bidding! Our men, ships, planes, blood, and treasure will be put to serve European interests!

Does Obama consult with the US Congress?  Bush did that, remember?  Does he ask Congress for an expression of support for the use of military power?   Bush, did that, and we still hear from the left that he got insufficient authorization.  No. Obama and Clinton get permission from the UN, the EU, and the Arab League instead.  I guess when you're a liberal, that's all that counts. No need to bother with the Congress or in making a case to the American people.

So, now we are in a war with no clear objective: Is it to establish a "No Fly Zone," or get Qaddafi out? What if we get a NFZ, which our military will establish quickly, but Qaddafi doesn't go or continues his war without aircraft? What then? Are we on the hook to protect Libyans from Libyans? How long before the pictures of dead and dying Libyans, supposedly killed by our missiles and bombs, have the UN, the Euros, and the Arab League backing out? Guess who will get left holding the bag of sand?

Code Pink, where are you?