Lorne Gunter: After Libya, Western credibility is shot
Mar 16, 2011 – 12:14 PM ET | Last Updated: Mar 16, 2011 12:35 PM ET
REUTERS/Chris Helgren
All hail the glorious ruler
It’s said that Teddy Roosevelt used to enjoy quoting a West African saying, “Speak softly, but carry a big stick.”To the extent that the current U.S. president, Barack Obama, has a foreign policy doctrine, it would have to be the exact opposite, “Shoot your mouth off, but carry no stick whatsoever.”
Just look at the disaster the U.S. and the Western allies have created in Libya.
In early March, Mr. Obama insisted that the murderous Libyan strong man, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, “step down from power and leave” Libya immediately. Everyone, including Gaddafi, thought that meant that if he didn’t depart, the U.S. was prepared to use some level of force to make him go. Shortly after the president utter his threat, it was reported that Col. Gaddafi was trying to negotiate his exit with the rebel forces that, at that time, seemed certain to depose him.
But then there was no no-fly zone imposed by the U.S. or NATO. And there were no arms shipments to the rebels. A few automatic weapons and some grenades might have tipped the balance in the war.
The U.S. and its allies have aircraft carriers and air force bases within easy striking distance of Libya. With little effort (and little risk to their flyers), they could have pinned Col. Gaddafi’s jets on the ground and silenced his anti-aircraft batteries. They likely, too, could have restricted his use of helicopter gunships.
Imposing a no-fly zone had European and Arab League approval. It’s true the two major multilateral organizations the U.S. wanted to sign-off on no-fly before it put it a zone in place — the UN Security Council and NATO’s governing council — are both still dithering over whether to approve such a move. But independently, the French, the Brits and the Arab League have nodded their support.
No one would have truly complained. There may have been some public posturing against U.S. Imperialism and the usual rot by leaders in the Arab world and elsewhere, but privately, almost no one likes Gaddafi — not even his fellow Arab leaders. So there would have been little real opposition to a U.S. move.
But President Obama is the new Jimmy Carter — a sanctimonious do-gooder, who makes all kinds of high-toned moral pronouncements, but then never follows through. He did the same when Iranian protesters threatened to overthrow the mad mullahs of Tehran in the spring of 2009. He wished them well, then abandon them to the thugs and guns of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose blatant theft of a democratic election had sparked the protests in the first place.
Mr. Obama might be forgiven for missing his opportunity in Iran. After all, he was new in office then. But he is two years into his job now, and Libya was a much cleaner opportunity. It’s easier for U.S. forces to get to than Iran and far less capable of throwing up resistance to U.S. military efforts.
Even the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak shows Mr. Obama’s fecklessness, in a way. Had Mr. Mubarak not chosen to go on his own, he might still be in power. He didn’t have the army on his side — as Col. Gaddafi appears to — but then the Egyptian protesters didn’t take up arms, either, as their Libyan counterparts have.
My point is, nothing Mr. Obama did seems to have decided events in Egypt. The Egyptians took care of their own problem. Had it been left up to the American president, Mr. Mubarak might well have chosen a Gaddafi-like crackdown and succeeded in keeping power.
It is said that the U.S. has faltered because as bad as Mr. Gaddafi is, the Obama administration feared the rebels might well have been worse; they might have turned out to be extreme Islamists who are pro-al Qaeda.
That’s certainly possible. But it’s hard to see how they could have been much worse than the Colonel, who at one time was a more enthusiastic sponsor of anti-Western terrorism than even Iran.
Whatever their intent, the rebels might have been grateful to the West, too, for helping free them from a corrupt and brutal dictator. At the very least, having seen Western might used against their foe, they may have been reluctant to test that might again by permitting their country to become a staging ground for terror attacks against Western targets.
The problem now is that no one in Libya feels any gratitude towards the West. And no one around the world fears the Americans.
Both the rebels and Col. Gaddafi will be angry with the West, especially the United States. And no one in any other country will take American threats or pressure seriously. American pronouncements about democracy and freedom and free and fair elections will be assumed to be just so much hot air.
The world may moan about American unilateralism. The French may sniff, and the Brits and Germans and others may wring their hands about American disdain for the UN and other international collectivist organizations. Still, everyone looks to follow the American lead. If the U.S. takes a firm stance and backs its up, others fall into step. They may not always like it, but they do it. And there is a certain stability in international affairs that comes from U.S. clarity and decisiveness.
Now, thanks to Barack Carter, we’re back to the point where the worst, most vehemently anti-Western elements feel emboldened. Meanwhile, moderate and pro-Western elements are afraid to stick their heads up because they are justly concerned the Americans won’t back them up. Iran has been lost for a generation thanks to Jimmy Carter’s unwillingness to stand up for moderate, democratic forces in the face of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution. Now in Libya and elsewhere there is a real chance of a repeat under the vacillating Mr. Obama.
National Post
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Posted in: Full Comment, U.S. Politics, World Politics Tags: Libya, Lorne Gunter, Middle East, NATO, United Nations Security Council
