Libya: Farce and Tragedy

It's happening. The end is nigh for the story that began with progressive delusions and arrogance about the transformative power of Obama's soaring rhetoric--a rhetoric which could and would change the world and, most notably, make the Middle East not the Middle East. Enchanted by his own spell, Obama, leading from behind, allowed the USA to become the pointy end of the spear for the absurd EU, and take on and take out Qaddafi. That action would bring an Arab Spring to benighted Libya; the murder of our Ambassador and his staff, well, those were just "bumps in the road" on the way to Nirvana.

It, however, now seems we are marshaling forces for the imminent evacuation of our embassy in Tripoli as Libya descends into civil war.

As I wrote on Halloween of 2012 re our mad Libya excursion,

We went to war where we had no major interests; against a regime that posed no danger to us; and with a policy that neither defined our objectives nor gave thought to what would happen if we "succeeded." All that Obama and Clinton could do was hark back to the 1980s, and cite Qaddafi's past misdeeds. Obama seemed channeling Ronald Reagan. It proved absurd and completely counterproductive to our interests of today. Our policy was driven by what I have called the liberal foreign policy mindset, to wit, "send America's youth off to war but only if there is no U.S. interest to be protected or furthered." 

Our policy was also motivated by another trait of the liberal mind: See what you believe. The Obama cult believed that the magical powers of the Dear Leader from Chicago would transform the world into a peaceful Eden where Julia could tend her community garden free from the threat of unwanted pregnancies, medical expenses, or having to look for a real job. The Arabs and the entire Muslim world would abandon their 1400-year-old war against the rest of the world, and come join us around the camp fire. Ah, the Arab Spring . . . if just those pesky Jews living in Occupied Palestine would get over their paranoia everything would be great.

Even before the above citation, way back in March 2011, I wrote that,

Unlike Saddam, the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, crazy old Qaddafi posed no threat to the US homeland or to our interests abroad. One of the great achievements of the Bush administration was that it defanged Qaddafi-- dismantled his nuclear weapons program and turned him into a valuable source of information on Al Qaeda. That administration basically treated Qaddafi as though he were an aged sex offender, put him under house arrest and tagged him with a ankle monitor. Qaddafi, once the darling of the left, became just a cranky old man with an odd fashion sense selling his oil to whomever wanted it. Sort of an Arab Joan Rivers selling his wares on late night TV-- he did seem to wear a lot of that Joan Rivers jewelry, by the way. We didn't buy much oil from him--only about 0.3% of our consumption comes from Libya--but the Euros did. So we had an imperfect solution in an imperfect world. 

Then, Qaddafi got himself a rebellion. OK. People in Libya are unhappy. OK. He is a crazy gangster and responded like a gangster. OK. And our interests are what? Are they so pressing as to justify Obama's incredible abuse of Presidential power? Not even an attempt to get Congress, much less the American people on board? How do we justify sending our people into harm's way, spending hundreds of millions of dollars, probably billions by the time this is "over," however, that's defined? What is the mission? No Fly Zone, or blast Qaddafi into the arms of 72 virgins? What result will make any difference to American national interests? What are our interests in this?

No thought was given to our national interests, but we got what we "wanted": Qaddafi ended up trapped in a sewer drain, beaten, and shot to death by a mob protected by NATO planes and drones.

Then an odd thing began to happen: reality began to assert itself. The American Ambassador and three other Americans were murdered in Benghazi. Our misadministration in Washington, as covered extensively here, launched a campaign of lies and excuses for why and how that happened. The MSM, with one or two honorable exceptions, went along and helped cover this criminal incompetence and prevarication in the interest of assuring The One's re-election.

Our Ambassador died at the hands of the jihadis for whom we went to war. The entire region has  become increasingly unstable as the crazies come out in North Africa and elsewhere, seeing weakness and cowardice everywhere--for some inexplicable reason they don't seem to fear #hashtags.

There are consequences for failure,

The unpleasant drag queen who used to run Libya knew how to keep these groups under control. Instead of working with the old buzzard, we listened to the Europeans, and participated in an insane war to have him removed. By the time we decided that Qaddafi was the devil, he was cooperating with us in the battle against the Islamists, had given up his involvement in international terrorism, and abandoned his WMD program. He was like an old repentant Mafia chieftain who sought to make points with the FBI. He also, it turned out, preferred dealing with American oil companies than with European ones, the real source of Europe's sudden rage against Loretta of Libya. Back when he was sponsoring terror, the Euros were terrified of him and opposed Reagan's actions against him. When he no longer posed a threat, ah, well . . . time to go to war, well, have the Americans go to war, that is.

As noted, we are putting together an armada in Italy to go into Libya and evacuate our Embassy--and avoid criticism for the Obama misadministration by putting on a show of overwhelming force just as Trey Gowdy's Committee begins the task of uncovering the Benghazi cover-up. We will see calls that now is not the time to criticize the misadministration when it is trying to save our people in Libya. The Embassy, of course, should be evacuated, and now. There is nothing useful it can do under the present conditions. Those conditions in large part were brought about by the disastrous foreign policy of Obama, Clinton, and now Kerry: a policy created by progressive delusions and by a total misreading of the role and importance of a resolute, steady, and activist United States. Weakness and cloudy thinking will get you killed. Listening to the EU will get you nowhere, and that's where we are.

We assume that the President has learned about the disintegration of his MidEast policy from the media, and is "mad as hell."

It all proceeds as foretold.