Updated, 8:15 p.m., March 28.
After over a week of war over Libya, President Obama finally makes the public case for fighting a third simultaneous kinetic military action war at the National Defense University. Our question: are you sold?
Smart people can reasonably disagree about the merits of Operation Odyssey Dawn. Juan Cole of the University of Michigan makes a vigorous case for the war on his blog. By contrast, Andrew Exum and Zack Hosford of the Center for a New American Security -- the Obama national security team's favorite think tank --urge the president to wind down the U.S. role in the war and warn that a bloody stalemate between the Gadhafi regime and its enemies is the most likely outcome.
At the White House Denis McDonough, Obama's deputy national security adviser, told reporters on Monday that Obama wasn't looking to set any precedents for interfering in the other Mideast revolutions by taking military action in Libya. "We don’t make decisions about questions like intervention based on consistency or precedent," McDonough said. "We make them based on how we can best advance our interests in the region."
One case he's likely to make for advancing those interests: keeping the commitment to Libya small and shrinking, with NATO taking the lead and the U.S. combat contribution phasing out. We'd certainly like to know how this war is supposed to end. Have your say in comments and let us know if he's persuaded you.
Update: Here's the text of the speech. What struck me was how much emphasis it placed on the justice of intervening in Libya -- brutal dictator, impending massacres, united international demands -- and so little on what happens next. All Obama said was that the U.S. will begin ratcheting back its combat involvement but will retain its supporting role. At the same time, he asserted that getting rid of Gadhafi is the U.S.' political goal but won't be its military one.
So what happens if Gadhafi doesn't simply go? What happens if the rebels can't overrun him, as the Pentagon assesses? What happens in the event of a stalemate? How does the U.S. not escalate if Gadhafi hangs on? The fact that there's no clarity after this speech is striking.
One more thing, and it's peripheral to Libya. But there's a lot of debate over whether there's an "Obama Doctrine" or not. (I'd had my own take on that since the 2008 campaign.) It won't do to simply say it's to intervene militarily when U.S. interests and values align to stop a given atrocity, since every post-Cold War president says that.
This line may be more instructive: "American leadership is not simply a matter of going it alone and bearing all of the burden ourselves. Real leadership creates the conditions and coalitions for others to step up as well; to work with allies and partners so that they bear their share of the burden and pay their share of the costs; and to see that the principles of justice and human dignity are upheld by all."
If Obama and NATO can manage to bring an end to the atrocities in Libya -- which means an end to the Gadhafi regime -- then Obama will have gone a long way toward demonstrating that America can lead the world without having to retain a leading role in every intervention. If not, he'll risk refuting a perspective that's very, very dear to his foreign policy thinking.
Photo: Flickr/WhiteHouse
See Also:- Obama’s Libya Goals AWOL
