U.S. Commits More to Libya War
"Libya free, Qaddafi go away -- thank you America, thank you Obama."
-- Chants from a group of 50 Cyrenaican tribesmen welcoming Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to the city of Benghazi.
The Middle East is hell on consistency for American politicians.
In 2008, Barack Obama blistered John McCain for saying he didn’t care if there were U.S. troops in Iraq for 100 years as long as they weren’t being killed. In 2011, Obama’s administration is negotiating with the Iraqi government for a permanent U.S. base in the country.
In 2008, Obama pummeled both Hillary Clinton and McCain for authorizing the use of force in Iraq and denounced the Bush administration for exceeding its mandate there. In 2011, Clinton and McCain are the leading cheerleaders for Obama’s congressionally unauthorized use of force in Libya.
As King Ozymandias might have told Obama, nothing lasts for long in those shifting desert sands.
At Clinton’s and McCain’s urging, Obama is pushing the U.S. deeper and deeper into the Libyan war. The Pentagon announced Thursday that the U.S. was adding attack drones to the fight in order to beef up the anemic NATO bombardment of Libyan positions.
We also learned this week that the administration is supplying financial support to the insurgents, a coalition of tribesmen locked in a multi-generational feud with the tribes loyal to Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi and Islamists whose efforts for theocratic rule Qaddafi has long and cruelly repressed.
Vice President Joe Biden said earlier this week that NATO could fulfill the mission in Libya without American assistance. It looks as if the world will never know.
One of the great NATO concerns in the war is having a pilot captured by loyalist forces. Having seen the public uproar over murdered journalists, Obama and his fellow heads of state cannot be pleased at the thought of a flyboy in Qaddafi custody. The war is already unpopular and a hostage situation would hardly enhance it.
But those fears have allied forces flying their bombing runs at impossibly high altitudes to avoid being shot down. The high-altitude sorties mean fewer available targets because of concerns about collateral damage
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