I hear all these commentators trying to figure out Obama’s bombing of Libya. They’re scratching their heads trying to reconcile it with his campaign position on Iraq, trying to figure out why the objective is just to protect civilians but not to remove Gaddafi. They’re all missing the mark. Let me explain it to you – it’s very simple.
The position of the Obama administration on Libya is that Gaddafi has to go. But this is not the objective of the military action. The reason is that the military action is taken to carry out United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. The United Nations resolution calls for the establishment of a no-fly zone over Libya, so that’s what we’re doing.
Just put it all together. In Obama’s world view, the United States is an immoral country. He apologizes for our history and for every president that went before him. He wants the United States cut down to size, to become an equal member of the world community. As such, he is just using our military to make us good citizens of the world community. So our military here is not acting as an agent of United States strategic interests, but rather as an arm of the United Nations Security Council.
No other explanation makes sense. The pundits on both the left and the right have tried to explain it in other terms, and the explanations don’t work. But he said it himself in his statement yesterday in Chile: “The stated U.S. policy is for regime change in Libya. The U.S. mission does not involve removing Gaddafi from power, however, but rather is limited to enforcing the U.N. resolution to prevent him from harming more Libyan civilians.”
The difference between administration policy and the military action is simply that. Administration policy is his decision. The military action is an expression of United Nations policy.
And how will we measure the accomplishment of the mission? Well, that’s not for us to decide – it’s for the United Nations.
