"They
like that Obama is using force to defend those standing up to dictators. … But
they do not like having him subject to U.N. Security Council authorization instead
of it being enough to have Congressional approval or resort to his own
presidential powers. … Neither do they like that Obama has relinquished the
central role to Sarkozy and leadership to NATO."
In line with Obama's speech
on Libya, here are some reflections on the military intervention by the
coalition attacking Qaddafi for the purpose of implementing U.N. Security
Council Resolution 1973.
1 - As for the neocons, they
like that Obama is using force to defend those standing up to dictators. (It's
always agreeable and comforting to see the leading power exert maximum force in
the service of the good).
But they do not like having
him subject to U.N. Security Council authorization instead of it being enough
to have Congressional approval or resort to his own presidential powers. (The
forces of good require a certain moral exclusivity by the person wielding them).
Neither do they like that Obama
has relinquished the central role to Sarkozy and leadership to NATO. (The exclusivity
must also be aesthetic: the person in charge must also be the one who best looks
the part).
And what they like least is
that they don't want to end up with Qaddafi in a cage and Marines parading
through Tripoli. (The neocons want a "happy ending").
2 - What the neocons would
like most of all is for the war in Libya to validate the war in Iraq (Then looking
back, they will pettily claim that they were right all along).
They would like to demonstrate
that the United Nations continues to be as irrelevant as before (or even more
so).
They prefer that the mission determine
the coalition, as enunciated by Rumsfeld, and not the other way around, as
Obama has acted: we will not overthrow Qaddafi so as not to splinter the
coalition. (And so on).
And finally, [the neocons
hold] that toppling Qaddafi is as necessary and beneficial as it was to topple
Saddam, and that any means employed to achieve that end are good (Their
toppling being proof enough, even if partition is the
result).
3 - This is string of manipulations
and falsehoods, concealing an undeniable fact: In the Iraq War, it was the
White House that first took the decision and demonstrated the will to go to war
to topple Saddam; the entire chain of events that followed was derived from
this: in the United Nations, in the Azores, and
finally on the ground.
[Editor's Note: It was at a conference
in the Azores, a chain of islands administered by Portugal, that President Bush
definitively informed European leaders that there would be war in Iraq.]
In Libya, the initiative was
taken by the people, who rose up against Qaddafi - and the initial European and
American attitude was first to see what happened, which only slowly mutated
into the political will to prevent a slaughter. And it was Sarkozy's abundance
of willingness that in the end, tipped the balance.
4 - The most
interesting parallel with the Balkans is with respect to our motives, where
initially there was a similar lack of willingness to intervene and where the balance of power
between Milosevic and those fighting him were even greater than those between Qaddafi and the rebels, which is underlined by people who wish to dismiss this inequality in Libya's case as a tribal one.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
It was the NATO air
bombardment of Serbia that most calls to mind today's actions over Libya. But
there are some differences: In that case, there was no U.N. authorization. In the
current case, the Alliance has learned the lessons of the past and more: the
coalition is taking the maximum possible care to attack only military targets
and not produce civilian casualties. They know it would be an unbearable
paradox if, having received a U.N. mandate, civilians were killed in the name
of their own protection.
The military intervention in
Libya shares common elements with the first Gulf War: legitimacy and
a broad consensus; and with that in Kosovo: moral legitimacy without setting
foot on the ground. But it differs somewhat from both of those and the illegal war
in Iraq in its amorphous objective: to protect the civilian population without
overthrowing the tyrant is somewhat ad hoc and will require further action
later, whether military or not.
5 - All military
interventions have one thing in common that makes them unwelcome and hard to
accept: we know how they begin but never how they'll end. No matter what
political framework is established, the conduct of warfare is always uneven and
erratic and at the mercy of circumstances beyond our control. Therefore, they
deserve neither enthusiasm nor applause, whether they have U.N. authorization
or not. The use of force, even the most legitimate in the world, cannot be undertaken
without the gravest seriousness and sober execution. Nothing can be sadder for
a politician, government, or parliament than to send their fellow citizens to
kill and to die.
