Saturday, March 26, 2011

Operation Rhododaktylos Round-Up: Strategic Incoherence

This whole thing is turning out to be a multilateralism fail on a massive scale.  Do we even have a clear-cut objective?  Goodness know there's no "exit strategy."  The entire project is maddeningly incoherent, and it's not funny anymore.  People are starting to NOTICE. Here are some thoughts, with more links (updated with a rant) after the fold:
To all appearances, U.S. foreign policy in the Obama Administration has now definitively gone down the rabbit hole. It is intoxicated with an advanced form of Wilsonian madness, one shorn of all sensitivity to the consequences of the U.S. government’s behavior. Like Alice with her pills, some things are getting or will soon get bigger—risks, mission definition and casualty figures on the ground in Libya—while others are getting smaller—our reservoir of good options, our stock of common sense and our peace of mind.


...the Obama administration is sending mixed signals. Actually, "mixed" doesn't quite do it justice. It's more like pureed, chopped or whipped signals.

For the record, I want some clarity here.  If the endgame is to get rid of Qaddafi, then get on with it.  All this dithering and confusion is basically guaranteeing a higher body count in the end because you're prolonging the conflict.  Anyway, about goals and objectives: what was the line that Napoleon said?  Oh, yeah: When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna.

I have to point out one piece, though, because it both makes a point and kind of bothered me.  Charles Krauthammer recently and rightfully hammered Obama's Libya policy (or lack thereof) in a piece entitled "The Professor's War."   OK, I understand that too many professors and eggheads and academics are LIKE this, but not every one.  My military history friends and I take exception to that idea!  (UPDATE:  We want to be this.  Or this.)

By the way, I've basically given up following the news of the president's latest non-statements.  I just feel like yelling, "What are you even doing?!"  It's as if I had called on a kid in class, and he sits there with the deer-in-the-headlights expression while making up crap (using as many pretentious words as possible in an attempt to fake me out) because he's clearly not done the reading for the day.  If Obama were a student in one of my classes, I would be probably sending out a mid-term warning email -- you know, the sort that says, come see me at once because you're in danger of flunking the class.  

Hell, flunking a class would be a blessing in comparison to what's going on.  We can argue about whether, in the beginning of all this, Libya was really that important to American interests.  But thanks to the pitiful performance by the increasingly Lilliputian non-Commander-in-Chief, it basically has become one because it's thrown the image of weak -- nay, clueless! -- American leadership across every media outlet in the world.  A weak America, even if weak only in leadership and appearance, makes the entire free world, and the world in general, a much more dangerous place as it emboldens bad guys -- and there are indeed bad guys.

No comments: