As the president’s national address on the U.S. military action in Libya is just hours away, I’m still dismayed by the methods deployed by the far right and the far left to denounce the no-fly zone.
On the right, beyond the hypocrisy and flip-flops, is the fact that conservative commentators are so determined to criticize President Obama that they’re disingenuously willing to dismiss 40 years of previous commentary about Moammar Ghadafi.
The War on Terror is suddenly on the back burner.
After all, we are talking about Libya, which was labeled a “terrorist state” for decades. We are talking about Ghadafi, a certifiable madman, a terrorist – and a thug who twice ordered deadly attacks on Americans.
The 1986 Berlin disco bombing, the response to which prompted all kinds of conservative praise when Ronald Reagan approved a brief bombing attack, killed U.S. military personnel. The Lockerbie bombing, which produced a fairly weak response from the Western world, killed American civilians.
Do we need to be reminded?
In the meantime, on the left we have ultraliberals dismissing Obama as another George Bush. Really? The other side is calling Obama a radical socialist who is afraid to take aggressive military action, and you are calling him a mirror image of Bush?
In addition, the fringe players on the left and the right both claim that Obama is violating the constitution by participating in a military coalition created by a United Nations vote. After Vietnam, Panama, Bosnia, Haiti and Kosovo isn’t that argument getting a little tired?
The coupling of left and right on the intervention in Libya is mind-boggling. How is it that a Ralph Nader anti-war speech is featured on Ron Paul’s fan web site? Or that the French are more hawkish toward Ghadafi than House Speaker John Boehner?
On the left, they say Obama should have stayed out because he could legitimately choose many other countries for intervention where oppression is routine and governments kill those who rebel. Yet, these are the same liberals who, to this day, wring their hands and gnash their teeth while vilifying the U.S. for not intervening in Rwanda or Darfur.
Nick Kristoff of the New York Times, who has probably reported more extensively on genocide and atrocities in Africa than any other American journalist, had this to say: “I would rather be inconsistent in saving many lives than to be consistent in deciding not to save any lives.”
Add to all this noise the impending GOP presidential campaign and you get all kinds of nonsense spewed for the benefit of the cameras. Besides Newt Gingrich’s blatant flip-flop (he was for intervention in Libya before he was against it), we have Sarah Palin complaining about Obama’s nation building.
First of all, nation building is not even remotely connected to the NATO no-fly zone that is becoming increasingly effective, day by day. And Palin’s remarks come after years of the ex-governor supporting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — by far the largest U.S. nation building efforts in modern times.
No one seems to emphasize the obvious – if Ghadafi succeeds and survives, that sends a strong message to Syria and Yemen and Bahrain that the way to deal with this grassroots push for freedom — this “Arab Awakening” — is to crack down hard, even if that means slaughtering their own people.
In the end, this all comes down to commentators on the right and left attempting to build up their respective audiences by tossing them some red meat, rather than sticking to a balanced meal — offering the nuances and pros and cons of a given situation.
Building that rabid audience means cashing in. Controversy and outrage fill up the bank account.
These provocateurs, these hucksters, never seem to mention that in the early years of the Iraq war it was common for those spouting off to preface their remarks with this: “Now, I’m not criticizing the troops…”
In time, the conservatives used the growing liberal opposition to the war as a club to beat the lefties over the head and call them unpatriotic – or worse.
Now, some of those same conservatives demonstrate no compunction to criticize the entire Libya mission, to question the president, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They vilify the planning, the strategy, the premature outcome.
Imagine how those U.S. pilots and sailors fighting in Libya react, if even so slightly, when they hear all the bad-mouthing of this mission that’s going on back home.
For the conservatives, the supposed hawks, the only thing I can surmise is that it’s wrong to criticize their president’s military missions but it’s fine to pile on the criticism of an Obama mission.
That tells me that past attempts by the right-wing to trash anti-war Democrats as less than American were just a tactic, a popular and effective spin that played to their crowd.
In other words – Cha-Ching.
