By Wes Pedersen
In his March 28 speech, Barack Obama came close to a flat-out promise that the United States, under the rest of his administration, will not stand idly by when civilians around the globe are being killed in any conflicts that may arise.
He thereby answered the question he should have been asked during his campaign for president: What kind of commander in chief will you be? Activist? Laid back? Out of the loop?
Activist, he now says. Look at how I am handling Libya – toughly, incisively. I can do the same anywhere the bad guys are threatening to take over.
That’s not reassuring at all. We’ve heard the same promise from other commanders in chief over the decades. The words were empty. Remember how they promised winning strategies in Viet Nam and Korea and against Russian invaders of Hungary? Remember the recent George W. Bush? He was an activist commander in chief, very much in the intelligence loop and willing to twist it until it came out with the fabricated information he wanted to go to war with Iraq.
Bush got us into two wars. Obama has kept us in those wars and now has us involved in a civil war even though we don’t really know any of the parties we are supporting with massive air strikes.
No one really expects a commander in chief to be the commander in chief. We do expect each one to act prudently, and to rely on the best advisers rank can buy before getting us into war in any part of the globe. Neither Bush nor Obama has done that.
We are fighting in Libya now because our intelligence agencies failed a primary task of spotting the revolutionary fervor throughout the Middle East before it became a raging fever.
The president doesn’t tell us that. He doesn’t say we erred badly in our assessment of the people’s attitude in the weeks before hell broke loose. He does think our planes have been doing a great job, opening up a path to victory for those fighting for some form of undefined democracy or because over the years they have come to hate Mouamar Gadaffi and want him out of their lives forever.
The fact that our intervention in Libya has brought an uncountable amount of collateral damage – innocent lives lost in bombing raids in Libya -- is not going to be found on the president’s teleprompter. In the current pumped up euphoria in the White House frontline, and throughout rebel strongholds in much of Libya, our planes are credited for rebel advances. That is deemed by the president to be solid evidence that our “strategy” is working.
The truth? We had no “strategy” when we opted to get involved in this civil war. We’ve been flying blind most of the time since. We have had no discernible goals, except, yes, get Gadaffi. That has now been modified by the president: Don’t string Gadaffi up from the nearest yardarm, let him hole up in private digs as Napoleon did on Elba.
When we elected Obama, we knew he had no background to assume the duties of an activist commander in chief. We did assume that he would be a good listener, basing decisions on a hard line of facts before acting. Unfortunately, he seems to have learned nothing in the process. His pedantic, above-it all manner seems to make him impervious to advice running counter to whatever conviction he may have at the moment.
For the next two years we have got to keep the pressure on Obama to learn and grow in matters of national and international security. His use of the teleprompter as an offensive or defensive Oval Office weapon is not working in the face of often contradictory reports from the front lines.
Obama is basing his decision to become deeply involved again in the Middle East on the belief that we are morally bound to support a cause if it is meant to save lives put at risk by local militants.
Call me mean spirited, call me a wretched human being,
I don’t care. I do not buy the argument that intervention in a country caught up in a civil war is in our national interest -- not when millions are in desperate need here at home, not when we know so little about the rebel leaders we are supporting, not when our bombs are killing innocent Libyans, and not when we are enmeshed in two other costly, life-claiming wars we cannot seem to end.
The president’s desire to flex his muscles abroad would be better put solving our economic problems and, at long last, tackling the critical lack of jobs at home. He has said he will return to the last chore now that, as he sees it, the quest against Gadaffi is near closure. Cynics will point out that jobs creation should have been his primary goal from the start. Sensible activism delayed is activism betrayed, at home or abroad.
We have had only one president since World War II who knew how to be an activist commander and get the job done. Too bad General Ike Eisenhower didn’t leave a guidebook for his successors. George Bush and Barack Obama could really have used it.
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Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C. |
Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (3/29):
The President's recent rhetoric on Libya is belied by his deployment of 2000 Marines to the area and goodness knows what else is to follow.
That automatically arming an unknown like the rebels is good for our interests is utter nonsense and frankly madness.
The already tons of millions of dollars expended in airstrikes, missile launching and naval and Marine deployments are cause for alarm for many Americans, especially veterans, whose benefits have been frozen for economic reasons.
As Wes has pointed out, there is hardly a sense of strategy to be seen here.
Only one add to Wes about post WII presidents. Ike was strong desite his ornery side man Nixon, but do not discount how Truman not only ended that war but took prompt and courageous actions with North Korea and the world's biggest ego in MacArthur...and all that after courageously integrating the armed forces. Great piece, Wes.
Media Maven (3/29):
The fact that the Gadaffi forcces have done well in severl locales should tell us something. The man may be a bastard, but he obviously has a great deal of support. Men are willing to risk their lives for him. As for the rebels, media reports have al-Qaeda fighers among them. Also, when Afghanistan was under Russian control, we armed many rebels with rapid-fire weapons that have often appeared in anti-US operations since.For the president to even be considering arming the Libyan rebels would be stupid beyond comprehension.
Bill Huey, Strategic Communications, Atlanta (3/29):
Wes, this might be your best ever. When I think of all the experience and accumulated wisdom encapsulated here, I wonder why I would ever want to pay 15 bucks a months to read the NY Times online. With that, however, I will add that I heard the estimable Tom Ricks say this is exactly the kind of gunboat diplomacy Eisenhower would have engaged in--a limited mission, in and out, make your point and leave. I don't know the answer. But I don't think Ike would have allowed any mission undertaken at his direction to be described as "kinetic military action," like the White House did last week.
Wes Pedersen (3/30):
Bill, I thank you for your astute observations and your warm praise. You are too kind, but don't let that stop you at any time in the future.
Joe, I referred to Ike as a post-War II president. Harry Truman ended that war with his decision to drop the A bomb on Japanese cities. Harry was thus a wartime president. Ike was the first postwar president. Don't confuse that role with his earlier command of the European Theater of Operations during the war. Please go back and check my wording on this. If you can envisage this, I and other Washingtonians were able to chat up Truman when he made his morning walks in the neighborhoods around White House. I have often wondered how many of those talks with passersby played some part, if any, in the decisions he made.
After the Puerto Rican dissidents attached Blair House, where Truman was staying temporarily, security around the president tightened. It was the end of era -- an aabrupt end.
Bill, you refer to Ike's gunboat diplomacy. Let's look at Suez in the mid 1950s. Britain, France and Egypt took over control of Suez. Ike, with his own notion of Arab relations, told them to back off. Meanwhile, men and women in Budapest were revoliting against communist rule, and the U.S., which had all but guaranteed U.S. military support, was trapped into a do nothing role. USIA was given specific instructions not to comment about either incident.
As the chief foreign affairs analyst for the USIA International Press Service, I was without a major story I could touch for three weeks. I turned instead to probing the China-USSR relationship. I discovered hints that China and Russia were in the midst of a power struggle. Naturally, it took State and the CIA two years to recognized the latter fact.
Kevin Foley (3/30):
You ignore the imperatives of our NATO commitment. Libya sits next door to Europe and our key allies. What happens there could well resonate throughout the continent, so sitting on the sidelines wasn't an option for Obama.
You also suggest that Obama shot from the hip. I don't think so. He and the NATO allies conferred for weeks before he took action and we and our allies are now in negotiations with leaders of the Libyan rebellion in London.
There's a lot more going on here behind the scenes than you are acknowledging.
Finally, comparing Libya to Iraq is fallacious. Bush and his people promised us their war would pay for itself and we'd be greeted as liberators. Obama made no such pronouncements.
This was a dirty but necessary job that had to be done. He didn't try to portray it as anything else.
It's very reminiscent of Bill Clinton's intervention in Bosnia to stop the genocide and Clinton turned out to be on the right side of history. Here we have a president dealing with competing forces and opinions and trying to make the best decision he can for the nation. He deliberates and gets counsel then takes the limited action he deems necessary so we meet our NATO obligations. His reward is to get second guessed and/or castigated.
Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (3/31):
for Kevin Foley: Sorry, pal, but there are those of us who have had more than three decades in the international arena. Wes is dead on target. As to your comment that "there is more going on here..."thatis one of the major problems with the lack of transparency and the absence of any kind of convincing representation to the Congress.
Libya may sit nex t to Europe, but she also sits next to a whole continent of other Arab nations who seem to lack the most basic kind of guts to deal with their longtime neighbor and were among the loudest to welcome his return to the United Nations...just after George Bush and Tony Blair also warmly congratulated him simply because he said he would be a good boy about nuclear stuff he did not even need.
Finally, we have put 2000 combat Marines outside the area, and if they are simply phony threats, then all the rest of the rhetoric is meaningless as well.
Kevin Foley (3/31):
Joe - Spare me the condescension. You and Wes aren't the only people who know something about foreign affairs. You and Wes want the complicated to be simple, much like Obama's critics on the right. You in particular, Joe, always see things through the prism of Israel. Believe it or not, some things that happen in the Middle East have nothing to do with Israel and this is one of them.
Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (3/31):
Kevin, it is not I who is condescending nor is the argument centered about Israel. You have totally ignored the point that Libya's immediate neighbors who have supported action against Qadaffi also conveniently absented themselves as usual from any risk to help with the action. I do resent your business about Israel since that was hardly any point in thuis discussion except for the singular fact the rebels in Egypt have seemed toscrap the peace accord and suspended natural gas service. As to wanting things to be simple, those of us who still function internationally as we correspond really do know better. I don't know your present involvements, but mine are current.
[email protected] (3/31):
Re: Israel, Kevin -- The truth and facts are that Israel is the only democracy in that part of the world, has never asked for US boots on the ground to protct them, and is the only country in the mid-east that the US can count on if we need their help. Other allies-in-good times have not been allies-in-troubled times. Even Turkey has hampered US efforts in Iraq, etc. by not letting the US use its bases during these conflicts. History shows that other Arab countries want US support, but don't support our efforts. And shamelessly, US Jewish soldiers can die in mid-east wars, but the Saudis make US Jewish soldiers hide their identity while on their soil.
Wes Pedersen (3/31):
And, now, Joe, we have the news that Obama has signed "secret" orders for CIA ops with the rebels. One of their assigned missions is to learn something about the rebels with whom we have gotten into bed. As I have said, our lack of intelligence on them, and, obviously, on the area, and Gadaffi's strength, has gotten us into great trouble. What do we do when the word leaks out that one or more of our men in combat has died? Charge in with more avenge those fatalities?
I've been in key conferences and know what goes on there. Indeed, I have been charged with decoding the private transactions in those meetings for international audiences.
The notion that Bush offered Iraqi access to oil as a reason for invasion is based largely on the then general assumption that Bush, as an oil man, would be guided by such access; it is traceable to Bush man Wolfowitz's pointed observation that "Iraq sits on a sea of oil."
In the current case, is there anyone with the sense of a common ant who does not realize the potential importance of oil to any country today? Obama is too intelligent to come out and say, "Yeah, we're going for the oil, baby!" NATO nations need no guidance on that score.
They are participating in the war out of self-protection, but they have grown weary of lining up behind the US via NATO; Iraq and Afghanistan daily send out signals that those wars are ongoing and have cost every participating NATO nation lives and financial burdens they are finding hard to bear. From its origin, NATO has been a device of the United States.
It's been a cover for us that has grown thin over the decades. To speak of its "imperatives" as being anything less is a bit much, although Russia is modifying the equation. (The secret Ribbentrop-Molotov accord designated the oil rich area south of Russia as "within the Soviet sphere of influence."
Kevin Foley (3/31):
Wes- From the President's Libya speech:
The task that I assigned our forces -– to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger, and to establish a no-fly zone -– carries with it a U.N. mandate and international support. It’s also what the Libyan opposition asked us to do. If we tried to overthrow Qaddafi by force, our coalition would splinter. We would likely have to put U.S. troops on the ground to accomplish that mission, or risk killing many civilians from the air. The dangers faced by our men and women in uniform would be far greater. So would the costs and our share of the responsibility for what comes next.
To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq. Thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our troops and the determination of our diplomats, we are hopeful about Iraq’s future. But regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.
Wes Pedersen (3/31):
Kevin, I do not know what prism you are viewing the Libyan situation through but it is clearly not the prism of reality. There is an arrogance in your writing that does not seem justified. Neither Joe nor I has claimed to be without flaw, but you are overly bombastic in your comments this time. Calm down and view the facts are they are.
KF, you say Joe and I want the complicated to be simple. Most analysts strive to make the complicated simple, because, whatever the core, it almost always is.
Fed Up In NYC! (3/31):
Mr Foley's caustic rant is so indicative of how the left cannot engage in constructive open dialogue. The column contributors are always professional, articulate and fair. Mr Foley is always unbalanced (in his arguments) and condescending.
Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (3/31):
Forgive one more comment, but I just re-read Mr Foley's lecture to Wes that included excerpts from President Obama's speech...as if the speech was drawn from uncontestable something or other. As someone who worked hard for Mr Obama, I do not find it either necessary or intelligent merely to accept all rhetoric as biblical In America we are both entitled and expected to respond to presidential dicta but not simply to follow in lockstep as there are no questions. Mr Foley, in his concerns about the "prisms" does not even offer what we would also do with Syria, Yemen and elsewhere in the MidEast where some pretty bad dictators are engaged in dealing with their people. It would seem the entire Middle East is in that "prism". That Israel is also part of it neither excludes them nor the other places Mr Obama might want to deploy peope called COMBAT MARINES. How is it Mr Foley merely accepts all of this on face value?
Wes Pedersen (4/06):
Mr. Foley, you are vocal in your sentiments but yokel in your acceptance of the notion that everything Obama says is fact. In your professional contacts, you have a problem with personal, and, clearly, public relations.
[email protected] (3/31):
Even as I write this, there is news that the NATO countries (actually that is U.S.-led NATO), are still trying to determine who the Lybian rebels are. Not every civil war results in the "good winning." Examples: Iran, Cuba, China, Viet Nam, Russia. In fact, most revolutions just traded one despot for another. Even the storied French revolution resulted in the reign of terror and, eventually, Napoleon. Best to be careful and certain who we are helping before taking sides. And sometime it's best not to take sides, especially in a civil war.
Fed Up In NYC! (3/31):
So here's the thing... this was a mission we HAD to embark upon- according to Mr. Foley. Yet, we have NO IDEA who we are helping and it could and most likely will put our enemies in the drivers seat- while we paved the way for them. Amateur time at the White House!
Bill Huey, Strategic Communications, Atlanta (3/31):
As no one has raised this point except Arthur Solomon, I would like to know LOTS more about the Libyan rebels we are about to arm. Supporters claim they are "doctors, lawyers and other professionals," but I can't believe that claim any more than I can envision a bunch of doctors, lawyers and CPAs taking to the streets in this country. So who are they? What do they hope to gain besides overthrowing the present regime? And of what use are they to us? Remember, the last time we did this, we got Daniel Ortega.
Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (4/01):
The President has no decreed pubolicly we will not arm the rebels and appears to have turned over leadership to NATO. The two problems with both of these are: 1)the Supreme Commander of NATO is an American called the SACEUR; and(2)we will look foolish indeed having deployed a large contingent of combat Marines as if we didn't really mean to use them....unless it meant to "escort" Qadaffi out of Libya. If it is the former of these two, we look really foolish; if it is the second of the two, we don't look much better. So what are those restless specially trained combat Marines doing there at all?
Wes Pedersen (4/05):
We've tried to dump responsibility for this war on to NATO, as if the world does not know that NATO is an arm of the US. Every day the deception is exposed. Obama still will not ackowledge the war as a war. Every day we are spending millions, with the costs of this and our other two wars sending the cost of living to the moon at home. We still do not have a real plan for exit from Libya...never had one at the start, don't have one now. That, as Senator Richard Lugar, the respected foreign affairs specialist, has emphasized, is a mistake that no combative nation should ever make.
Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (4/06):
And here we go again with the revelation we are going to help 'take down' the boss of Yemen! When did we become the world's liberators when we cannot resolve so much at home? And from what bank of funding and goodwill can we muster the power to do things that will occupy America in the Middle East for years bgut certainly make a lot of defense contrctors thrilled?
There was a play titled "Sense and Sensibility", both of which seem to have flown. Aha! But lurking below the surface is a UN move to corner Israel by declaring a Palestinian state to be on land where Israel exists as a result of victory against several nations in 1967. Mr. Foley might look more closely at the prism of the Middle East before facetiously lecturing to those of us who have seen it up close and very personally. |