Obama’s war against Libya is my first liberal war as a resident of the USA; I was living in Canada during the Kosovo campaign (here). Americans may be used to waging war on the world, but this brand of Exceptionalism (here) is a shock to the sane person’s system. Most countries—I’ve lived in a few—do not go to war with the regularity the US does. As it was once noted, here, “a brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly one fights because it can.”
To tell you the truth, the overall zeal to attack Iraq (see “Tuned-Out, Turned-On, And Hot For War”) in 2003, was on a par with the enthusiasm currently being expressed for defending the amorphous entity we call “rebels” (whose Egyptian compatriots are now performing hymen inspections on women (here). Back then, with the exception of some, not all, libertarians and lefties, the justifications advanced by the retread liberals known as neoconservatives were wholly embraced. By popular demand, MSNBC, CNN, and the New York Times (This means you, Judith Chalabi Miller, now at FoxNews) adopted a similar faux patriotism devoid of skepticism and serenely accepting of every silly White House claim.
As to the casus belli, nothing has changed. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn), McMussolini, Newt Gingrich, FoxNews, Juan Williams, and others, all solemnly intone about the massacres that where in process when Obama began strafing Libya. Let us presume that it is the US’s role to stop injustice wherever it occurs and vet the world’s leaders; where’s the evidence of these killing fields? At least when President Bill Clinton bombed Kosovo in 1999, also without the formality of the comatose Congress’s approval, there were those disturbing images. Now we hear nothing but assertions and the childish terms: “the dictator” is killing “his people” repeated ad nauseam à la the slobbering over Egypt.
I suspect that the average Libyan has fewer encounters with representatives of the state than the average black man living in New York. (“According to a report in The Times last year, there were a record 580,000 stop-and-frisks in the city in 2009. Most of those stopped (55 percent) were black.” I know, harmless fun when done in a “good” country like ours.)
The American Managerial State is so much more efficient in encroaching on its citizens than are these tin-pot dictators, whom we have built-up into mega-monsters in our infantile, Disneyfied minds. In Libya, some baksheesh is likely to make a bureaucrat disappear. Given the US’s record-breaking incarceration rates, the average American is more likely to be jailed, harassed or have a threatening encounter with the state’s emissaries than your average Egyptian under Mubarak (who chased the Brotherhood, mainly).
Tell me, who killed Carol Anne Gotbaum? (or Baron “Scooter” Pikes?) Gotbaum met her demise not in a Pakistani or Saudi airport, but in Phoenix’s Sky Harbor. There are lots more like her. Let’s worry about our own tyrants.
Naturally, John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Joe Lieberman, the Fox and MSNBC phalanx—all approve of Obama’s paternalistic war in Libya. The rigor mortis Right, in particular, has protested the operation not on points of principle, but on timing, strategy, mission statement and the degree of control exerted by Über America: Obama entered the fray too late, he’s relinquishing the National Greatness agenda by sharing the cockpit with the Europeans, only when the US leads the world in a military operation can any good come of it, blah, blah, blah.
UPDATE I (March 28): STRONGMAN BIDEN. I’m sure it’s a mere coincidence—a statistical anomaly, when it comes to the interface between Americans and their leaders—but in the “good country” (USA), those doing the Vice President’s bidding can lock up a reporter in a closet for hours “after he was invited to cover a Florida political fundraiser because they did not want him talking with the guests.” Onward to fix Libya!
UPDATE II: Democrat Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) adds another point to the limited litany of complaints against BHO’s war: The Great Communicator didn’t convey his (magnificent) message effectively. Repackage the message and all will be well again.
And I was worried for a moment.
No mention of America’s sink hole of a debt.
UPDATE III: BRAVO BERNIE SANDERS. The Democratic senator from Vermont, a man of the far left with whom I seldom agree, puts up an opposition to BHO’s Libya adventure, on the Dylan Ratigan Show: “We have lost thousands of lives in Afghanistan and Iraq [for naught], and trillions of dollars.”
And here’s Bernie’s pivotal point, put in precise language:
“I would hope that the president will tell us [in his address later today] that, if our friends in Europe (France ad Italy), and the UK, feel very strongly about this issue, that they will do what they want to do. But I am not enthusiastic about the US getting into yet another conflict given the other two wars and $ 14 trillion in national debt.” More or less.
Sanders went on to spoil this common sense with his usual eco-energy silliness.