Kaddafy Killed

I guess that means we won.

What did we win?

Criticizing Obama Becomes Mainstream

The Bloom, it is off the rose:

The former state senator may, in fact, be slaving away on 18-hour policy days. But much of that is closed out of sight. So the public is left to focus on Obama's frequent vacations, golf outings, celebrity gatherings and proclivity to give a speech at the first whiff of trouble.

This was a point that I made during the Bush years, that 90% of what the President does happens away from a TV camera. So I don't attack Obama on "image" stuff. Things like Air Force One buzzing Lower Manhattan or Obama's devotion to his teleprompter look bad but are only tangentially involved with the duties of the executive. However:

It's one thing to launch a war against Libya while packing up your wife, daughters, mother-in-law and her friend to tour South America.

It's another to wait nine whole days to bother explaining the unexpected combat to a puzzled nation. Or nearly two months to arrange an Oval Office address on the country's worst environmental disaster ever.

More to the point, these things even getting a mention in the LA Times means that the same people who thought Bush an imbecile based on how he seemed on TV are now wondering about Obama's basic political competence based on the same thing. That means something.

Let's Be Honest: The Man is a Fool.

For it must be noted, that men must either be caressed or annihilated; they will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great ones; the injury that we do to a man must be such that we need not fear his vengeance.  -Machiavelli

Obama has gone to war with Libya without Congressional authorization, without a plan for achieving his goals, and he is likely to fail. Like many a man who festoons himself with the title of Man of Peace, he has refused to study war, and so has allowed himself to be hoodwinked. He believed the rebels in Libya, who believed, like the rest of the world, that Gaddafi was Mubarak in silly clothes. He did not consider that Gaddafi was a soldier by training, that he fought in Chad for seven years to control that poor country, or that he went to war with Egypt in 1977 more or less on a whim.

Such a man does not flee like Ferdinand Marcos or Baby Doc from popular discontent. He does not fear his palaces being blown up by cruise missiles. He will not surrender to maintain his wealth. He will give up his control over the country at the same moment that his body gives up his spirit.

Obama should have known this, or at the very least, inquired as to the nature of the man whom he had decided "must go." But we should not be surprised that he didn't. Conflict and the resources needed to win it have always been above his pay grade.

"Kinetic Military Action"

The Examiner:

Now, White House officials are referring to the war in Libya not as a war but as a "kinetic military action." As common as "kinetic" might be among those in government, it still seems likely to strike members of the public as a euphemism that allows the Obama administration to describe a war as something other than a war.

Polysyllabics are like passive voice: they obscure. Passive voice obscures who's acting; pollysyllabics obscure the action itself.

Is it Really Aggression if You're Fighting a Rebellion?

Look, I'm sure that Muammar Kahadaffy (or however his name is spelled) deserves every salty ounce of the rage that the Libyan rebels have for him. But Mickey Kaus has a point:

It’s one thing for a supra-national authority–the U.N.–to authorize a war against someone who has committed cross-border aggression, or who has repeatedly violated earlier U.N. resolutions left over from a previous war. That was the case with Saddam in 2002–in theory.*It’s another to let the U.N. authorize a war on what Obama calls ”humanitarian grounds”–whether it’s to stop actual killings or some less severe variety of  “human rights violation.”  These are concepts that are easily watered down to justify intervention–indeed, as Massimo Calabresi makes clear, they seem to have been watered down in this very case, where Gaddafi’s pending atrocities are hardly Rwanda-sized...

And yes, that's a mighty flimsy defense. But legal authorization carries with it the threat of precedent. Are all rebels to demand UN-guarunteed Marquess of Queensbury rules?

Getting rid of Gaddafi is an easy call on national-interest grounds: he's a slime. He has the blood of Americans on his hands. His people, carried up in the winds of the Arab Spring, want him gone, and it behooves us to make nice with them. Done and done. But jumping in with a vague constructions about atrocities that may not have happened, in an internal revolt that touches no other nation, this may lead we know not where.

It's Not Just Me...

Word Around the Net:

Months before the actual invasion of Iraq began, President Bush brought his argument to the American people, using speeches, interviews, and his administration writing editorials for various news sources. President Bush tried to convince the American people of the necessity of his plan and why.
By contrast, President Obama went to the UN and started taking action. He did not seek to convince anyone in the public of what he was doing, nor gain public support.

Obama seems not to remember what country he Presides over. After all, there's oceans to stop...

Being President is Hard.

It's been fun the last day or two, watching proggies of various stripes get themselves all worked up over the Bombing of Libya. Glenn Reynolds is having a grand time granting Andrew Sullivan the title he has so eminently deserved. But the outraged proggies may have a point.

Does anyone have any notion of what it is we're DOING in Libya? Are we merely levelliing the playing field? Or are we ousting Khadaffi? To what end? By what means?

Say what you will about Bush, but he made it plenty clear in the build-up to Afghanistan and Iraq what we were doing and why. He made it clear to Congress, and he made it clear to the American people. For that matter, when Reagan bombed Libya back in '86, he went on television and told us why.

Obama has done none of that. So I don't blame the proggies for being bent out of shape, even if I do wonder why they expected a one-term junior senator with no executive experience to handle the Presidency better.