The Obama Diary

Sacramento Bee editorial: It didn’t take until Monday for the Monday morning quarterbacks to start criticizing President Barack Obama’s decision to join U.S. allies in a campaign to stop Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi from killing his own people.

Born-again doves such as George Will, Donald Rumsfeld and Newt Gingrich ganged up on the president for the bombing Saturday of Gadhafi’s air defenses and implementation of a no-fly zone over Libya.

….Gingrich says that, if he were president, he “would not have intervened,” even though on March 7 he criticized the president for his restraint on Gadhafi. “This is a moment to get rid of him,” Gingrich said then. “Do it. Get it over with.”

….Obama did act, and part of the delay involved assembling an international coalition to carry out the mission. And what is the mission? At least part of it – the major part – is to prevent Gadhafi from engaging in a further bloodbath. The allies have been largely successful in that goal, a fact that detractors such as Will, Rumsfeld and Gingrich should at least acknowledge.

Americans should also recognize that, unlike the intervention that Rumsfeld helped orchestrate in Iraq, this one wasn’t grounded in false pretenses of “weapons of mass destruction,” etc.

President Obama has been clear that allies and U.S. forces are carrying out a humanitarian mission, not a chess move in an attempt to reshape the Arab world. And though the international coalition seems divided on responsibilities and the endgame, it is far more broad and cohesive than the one the Bush administration assembled in its reckless invasion of Iraq…..

Full article here

The Syracuse Post Standard: Wonder why the United States has just one president and one secretary of state? Imagine trying to set U.S. foreign policy with 535 members of Congress in charge.

House Speaker John Boehner this week sent a huffy note to the president complaining that Congress wasn’t sufficiently consulted in the decision to help implement the United Nations resolution calling for measures to protect civilians from a vengeful Col. Moammar Gadhafi in Libya….

Is Boehner’s second-guessing really saying it was a mistake to commit the United States to the U.N.-sanctioned effort to prevent Gadhafi from his avowedly “merciless” campaign to subdue his own citizens? That the administration acted too precipitously in joining its allies to prevent more bloodletting?

…it’s pretty clear that if the U.N. and allied nations had not acted, Gadhafi would be back in control, with blood flowing in ever-greater quantities. What message would that have sent to democracy advocates in Tunisia and Egypt, not to mention Syria, Iran, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere?

There’s no question that this is a messy operation. Libya’s rebels appear nowhere close to organizing a coherent democratic alternative to Gadhafi’s police state — hardly surprising, considering his relentless mission to crush any opposition. Efforts by the Obama administration to hand off major responsibilities for the operation may bring results as soon as this weekend….

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton notes that the protection of civilians in Benghazi already is a sign the U.N.-backed effort is succeeding — though she added Gadhafi’s defiance poses a continuing challenge. Meeting that challenge will require dexterous diplomacy in coming days. But it’s worth the effort.