More Foolishness from the Media and the Politicians that Play to It — Too Early Pronouncements that President Obama Was Right to Start a War in Libya

© 2011 Peter Free

 

24 August 2011

 

 

Thinking is too much to ask of a significant portion of our most prominent leaders and influence-manipulators

 

With Libyan dictator Qaddafi’s fall from power, people are popping up all over the place pronouncing that his fall represents a strategic victory that justifies President Obama’s initiation of a third Muslim country war.

 

Far from it.

 

Objections to Obama’s intervention in a region that held virtually no implications for the American national interest were comprised on long-term geopolitical and economic grounds.  War is expensive, particularly so for an over-extended military and deficit-prone nation.  And the geopolitics of an even successful dictator-toppling have not yet begun to play out.

 

The short-sighted people who are now flocking to praise the President’s impulsive (front and back seat) NATO-driving have not the wit to recognize that history always takes a while to play out.

 

 

National interest versus impulsively chosen ad hoc-itis

 

In the absence of other factors, getting rid of bad men, in and of itself, is not generally a valid claim on the national interest or its purse.

 

The “not in the national interest” objections to the President’s Libyan war-making remain today just as valid as the day they were made.  These objections are particularly glaring when side-lighted by the United States’ contrasting inaction against Syria’s murderous President Assad.

 

In this latter regard, some of the air-headed supporters of the Libyan enterprise now claim that an ad hoc policy comprised of “doing what we can, when we can” is enough to guide American policy.  They overlook the fact that there is a lot that the United States can do in many situations.  But just because we can do it does not mean that intervention is a good idea.  That is why, heretofore, the national interest (generally defined) was considered the best guide to intelligent policy.

 

Substituting ad hoc-itis and impulsivity for geopolitically intelligent strategy is bone-headedly foolish.  Such short-sighted counsel generally comes from people who will neither bleed nor pay when their advice is acted upon.

 

Sound strategy requires that we be able to envision probable futures.  Strategizing without a probable and delineated end-situation is pointless.  In Qaddafi’s case envisioning the end result of his removal is currently impossible.

 

 

Problems with the “bad man” theory of intervention — the extended “suck” of the aftermath

 

The only persuasive justification for removing Qaddafi was that he was “bad” and murderous person.  But it is not at all clear that his place will not be taken by equally bad, conflict-prone, and/or murderous people.

 

Instead, the likelihood in Libya is that near-chaos will reign for some time.  And this quasi-anarchy will almost certainly ruin as many lives as Qaddafi did.

 

Consequently, the only sound geopolitical justification for removing Qaddafi the Murderer would be that his demise — regardless of subsequent chaos it causes in Libya — would win the United States influential friends, who would, somehow, eventually benefit our nation’s position in the world.

 

But this seems unlikely.  Especially so, given that Libya’s future seems unpredictable and an extended American or NATO presence or influence (of some kind) is likely.

 

Intervention has a way of sucking the interveners into an extended aftermath.  In Libya, such a “suck” will almost certainly benefit the plutocrats who comprise the military-industrial complex.  But it will most probably not benefit the United States’ geopolitical and financial interests.

 

Americans and Europeans being too much “around” in the Muslim world is a prescription for future hostilities.  So the friendship benefit, that might have been attendant on assisting in removing Qaddafi, appears to be a long shot.

 

In my view, the “bad man” theory, as sole justification for autocrat removal, is not a strategically sound one.  Americans seem perennially to conflate single men with forces of history.

 

Just as Osama bin Laden’s demise will not slow al Qaeda (deserved and proper though his execution was), Muammar Qaddafi’s exit from power is probably not suddenly going to redound to the United States’ benefit in a way that visibly justifies (or balances) the financial, political, and military investments we’ve unwisely already made.

 

 

People who can’t think beyond the present five minutes are not qualified to lead (or advise) the nation

 

Short attention spans and short-term thinking are literally killing the United States’ potential for a successful future.

 

Anybody who pronounces the Libyan intervention a success, even before it is finalized, is strategy-idiot.