I must admit to being confused on several points about the “conclusion” of the Libyan conflict / war. In the first place, the confusion begins with what to call it. Since the Iraq conflict was labeled a War, it seems only right to label Libya a War as well.
The next point of confusion comes from my experiences in the early 2000’s, when I was brow beaten, and savaged, for daring to defend the President at that time, and his conduct of the Iraq War. At the time, Afghanistan was still considered a Good War, since Al Qaeda was directly acknowledged to be supported by the government there. I was told Iraq was secondary, and that there was no national interest, and that if we had stop every mad man dictator in the world we’d have to attack half the world’s countries, etc. But now it seems that for even less justification than was used for Iraq, we allowed, supported, and participated in the efforts to remove Qaddafi, dead or alive, from rule of Libya. Hilary Clinton says “we came, we saw, he died” with a smile on her face (put a cowboy hat on her, and she’d have a good likeness to the parody of George Bush, no?).
I also remember when Pat Robertson was condemned for suggesting that the way to deal with a South America Communist dictator involved possible assassination. But now have we not done precisely that in Libya? Are we not in fact going after the world’s bad actors, as it was painfully and exhaustively declaimed to me that we should not? But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Which leaders do we get to call bad actors and strong men? Which ones are deserving of death? The left complained when George Bush was making what they considered to be arbitrary judgments on this matter. But is it now okay to make those same arbitrary judgments with Obama at the helm?
I write this not to argue with the death of the mad man Qaddafi. I was in Liberia, and saw and heard first hand the destruction wrought by his meddling in the affairs of his continent (he financed and supplied many an insurrection in his day). Good riddance. But I cannot believe I am seeing this come from the same people who so vigorously attacked George Bush for essentially the same activity. If everyone is going to try to take credit here and say it is a good thing, then I want an apology (tongue in cheek), or at least an acknowledgement that there’s some serious soul searching that needs to be done in figuring out exactly what our role is in the world today, and the extent and use of our armed forces and diplomatic service in carrying that out.
