Republican candidates for president have little or nothing to say about the end of Gaddafi's regime in Libya. I guess I can't completely blame them. Some refused to back this bloodless (or rather, US-casualty-less) war, apparently only finding themselves capable of supporting wars that bear tremendous human cost to America. But even the ones who acknowledge deposing Gaddafi is a good think refuse to give any credit to this administration.
Via Politico:
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Texas Gov. Rick Perry called the end of Qadhafi’s “violent, repressive dictatorship” a “cause for cautious celebration.” But his ginger, forward-looking statement didn’t offer a larger view of the action in Libya and didn’t mention either President Obama or NATO.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61874.html#ixzz1VoTTJcA4
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But hey, you can't blame politicians for being political. I mean, there is a presidential election going on. Certainly, the Democrats weren't so anxious to credit George W. Bush when he captured Saddam Hussein as the Dems were fighting it out in Iowa for the nomination in 2004. Right?
From Signals Vs. Noise:
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I was particularly impressed with the level of maturity and respect offered by Dean:
This is a great day of pride in the American military, a great day for the Iraqis, a great day for the American people and, frankly, a great day for the administration. This is a day to celebrate the fact that Saddam’s been caught. We’ll have to wait to see what happens to the campaign later.
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Hmmmm...
I guess I can't say much. Dean showed respect but lost the nomination, ironically because people thought he was too much of a screaming firebrand. I just find it interest that warmongering Republicans who were so anxious to support a full-scale invasion of Iraq are so squeamish about praising the disposition of a despot when it was a Democratic president who had a role in the effort.
Double standards. Hypocrisy. A refusal to even say congratulations to the other side.
These are the values the modern GOP wants to restore in the White House, folks.
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The end of a dictatorship is always good news, but rarely a guarantee that the next government will be better. What would be the best case scenario in Libia? Oil companies maintaining order as 1.6 milliom barrels/day of production comes back on line over the next few years? All of your readers may want parliamentary gov'ts from Iraq to Libia, but I suspect Europeans just want stable economies exporting oil, as opposed to chaotic economies exporting refugees.
ReplyDeleteThe only situation I can think of in the near east where a dictator was replaced by a fairly stable democracy is Turkey, and Ataturk is remembered much as we remember Washington, not as the world will remember Saddam, Mubarik and Quadaffi. I suspect the only political organizations that matter in this part of the world for years to come will continue to be the ones wearing uniforms.
I think a better comparison is bin Laden, even though the timeframe was a little different. Both Romney and Pawlenty congratulated the President (and without seeming to regret it, unlike Dean). http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/01/news/la-pn-republicans-bin-laden-20110502
ReplyDeleteYou're deliberately missing the point when you say the Republican candidates only support wars that kill lots of Americans. It's a little like asking if they've stopped beating their wives. And, not to minimize even one death, American or otherwise, but compared to major wars in our past, Iraq and Afghanistan are relatively bloodless for our troops. 5,800 deaths in 10 years, compared to 56,000 in the 10 years we were heavily engaged in Vietnam. 53,000 in 4 years in Korea. And 400,000 in 4 years in WWII (although the US and the world were certainly engaged in more of a total war). Balance those along with injuries, other deaths, cost, and the value of success or failure however you like, but it shows a lack of perspective to call this a tremendous human cost to America, and it always bugs me when I hear something like that.
(I don't mean to discount casualties from other conflicts, but war technology changed so dramatically between WWI and WWII that comparison is too much of a stretch.)
An interesting read that popped up on the front page of Slate today: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/15/think_again_war?page=0,0
ReplyDeleteWelcome back, Tom.
ReplyDeleteCertainly, the reception to bin Laden's death was more gracious, but in terms of timing, I think the deposition of Hussein and Gaddafi are very similar. It creates an issue for opposition leaders to have to comment on an administration's success at a time when they most need to satisfy the base, and the way the Republican candidates handle this now greatly contrasts to how Democrats handled this eight years ago.
As for the point on the war, you miss my point. Yes, there have been bloodier wars in the days before long-range weaponry, but the manner in which we engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq was fundamentally different than how we engaged in Libya, or as we did in Bosnia in the 1990s. That is the difference between Bush's unilateralism and Obama's multilateralism. The Republican-preferred way to wage war is in the cowboy manner of the last administration, where America moves forward without the support of the world and bears the brunt in bloodshed. The Democrat-preferred way is to offer support to those forces with real skin in the game, which results not only in local ownership of a revolution but in a lower casualty report from the DOD.
The machismo foreign policy of the past was not only less effective in its desired goal of bringing democracy to the Middle East. It also resulted in the deaths of thousands of U.S. soldiers. Yes, technology reduced our casualty count compared to Vietnam, but sound foreign policy did an even better job. And it cost less in dollars, too.
And because this kept me up a little last night, can you please explain how Hussein is more like bin Laden than like Gaddafi? To me, there is very little commonality between Hussein and bin Laden, which is the entire reason many people who supported going after bin Laden thought invading Iraq was just nuts.
ReplyDeleteThe similarity between Hussein and bin Laden as opposed to between Hussein and Gaddafi is more a matter of perception among Americans than it is a matter of reality. A large part of that is, with the US taking a smaller role in Libya, Gaddafi hasn't been demonized in the media the way Hussein and bin Laden were.
ReplyDeleteThe manner in which *the outside world* is engaging in Afghanistan and engaged Iraq is fundamentally different from the way in which it is engaged in Libya. There wasn't an armed rebellion against a dictatorship in Afghanistan or Iraq. All three are different wars (although Iraq's public justification evolved to something more like Libya's by the end). Setting aside Iraq, I don't think there's a significant difference between the fundamentals of how a Democratic administration would have handled Afghanistan and how a Republican administration actually handled it. America had the most direct interest, and the world's largest military (by far). We were naturally going to take the lead there.
We haven't lost 0 people in Libya because we're allowing the UN to take the lead there. We've lost 0 people in Libya because the entire coalition in Libya has lost 1 person, and that in a traffic accident in Italy.