Women War Hawks Win on Libya19 March 2011 9:35 pm by Taylor MarshThe Pentagon says 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles have been launched from U.S. and British ships in the Mediterranean, hitting more than 20 Libyan targets along the Mediterranean coastline. Navy Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, told reporters the Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from one British submarine and a number of American destroyers and subs. He said the success of the mission was not immediately clear, adding that additional attacks would commence later. – Qaddafi’s Air Defenses ‘Severely Disabled’ Following Military Strikes
Never having fallen for what Ann Althouse writes about today, I don’t find it remotely surprising that it’s women who guided Pres. Obama to act in Libya. Some of you might remember this column. It’s not the first time women have channeled the masculine on foreign policy, because there has yet to be a convincing competing narrative created by any woman. Is it because on war and peace gender doesn’t apply? If anything, it’s Pres. Obama who has offered the feminine side of the equation so far.
In a Paris hotel room on Monday night, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton found herself juggling the inconsistencies of American foreign policy in a turbulent Middle East. She criticized the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates for sending troops to quash protests in Bahrain even as she pressed him to send planes to intervene in Libya.
Only the day before, Mrs. Clinton — along with her boss, President Obama — was a skeptic on whether the United States should take military action in Libya. But that night, with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces turning back the rebellion that threatened his rule, Mrs. Clinton changed course, forming an unlikely alliance with a handful of top administration aides who had been arguing for intervention.
[...] The shift in the administration’s position — from strong words against Libya to action — was forced largely by the events beyond its control: the crumbling of the uprising raised the prospect that Colonel Qaddafi would remain in power to kill “many thousands,” as Mr. Obama said at the White House on Friday.
The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret.
Now, the three women were pushing for American intervention to stop a looming humanitarian catastrophe in Libya. [...]
This is the same type of action that helped kick Hillary Rodham Clinton off the presidential path, regardless of the reality that Sen. Barack Obama had virtually the same voting record on matters of war and peace as Sen. Clinton, minus his ducking outon a measure on Iran where he couldn’t get away with voting “present,” which has been his problem the past few weeks as well.
As much as I wanted and applaud Pres. Obama for waiting for word from the Arab League and the UNSC, both of which finally came, I am astounded at the lack of consideration on WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR THE MILITARY ACTION Clinton, Rice and Power wanted, and Obama now backs.
Let me also ask a question no one seems to be asking: Where the hell are the Saudis and the Egyptians? The Saudis have a fierce fighting force, with Obama having completed the largest sale in U.S. history to them last fall, $60 billion, and we give Egypt $1.3 billion a year. So why is the U.S. so willing to foot the bill for a military action that isn’t in America’s vital interests no matter how you look at it?
Trying to salve the wounds of past mistakes doesn’t make what’s happening in Libya “genocide.” It’s a civil war citizens of Libya are waging against their leader, which however excruciating to watch isn’t any of our business.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Iran on Saturday to stop meddling in Bahrain and other Arab states in the Persian Gulf, but also called on the kingdom’s leaders not to use force against anti-government protesters.
Clinton said the United States “has an abiding commitment to Gulf security” and that “a top priority is working together with our partners on our shared concerns about Iranian behavior in the region.”
“We share the view that Iran’s activities in the Gulf, including its efforts to advance its agenda in neighboring countries, undermines peace and stability,” she told reporters after an international conference on the crisis in Libya. At that meeting, she met with numerous Arab officials who complained that Iran was fomenting unrest Bahrain and elsewhere.
Bahrain’s Sunni minority monarchy is facing growing opposition from the Shiite-majority population and has called in security forces from neighboring Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to deal with escalating protests.
[...] The Gulf force underscores the deep worries about Bahrain’s stability among the region’s Sunni kings and sheiks. They fear any stumble by Bahrain’s leaders could embolden more challenges to their own regimes and possibly open room for Shiite heavyweight Iran to make political inroads.
The U.S., which counts Bahrain as a centerpiece of its Gulf military framework, has sent top envoys to meet with the embattled monarchy and has been criticized by Shiite opposition groups for not coming to their support.
And where the hell is Congress where Libya is concerned? Did we learn nothing from preemptive war in Iraq?
Once again, this time goaded by females, Pres. Obama is unleashing the winds of war without thinking through the exercise completely, even if cautious deliberation is where he began. It does, however, give more proof that if he was in the Senate at the same time as Clinton Obama would have very likely joined the other presidential hopefuls in wanting to oust Saddam Hussein.
Obama’s declaration was stunning:
“Left untouched,” Obama said, “we have every reason to believe Gadhafi would commit atrocities against his people.” – USA Today
That’s our military foreign policy standard? Hardly, because it sure as hell didn’t apply in Darfur.
Pres. Obama, after being correct to wait, is now sounding astoundingly hypocritical.
American politicians have proven their bankruptcy once again through talking about military intervention as the U.S. economy sputters, austerity talks continue, entitlements suggested for targeting, with the U.S. military budget and our policies never being included in the reality scenarios.
You cannot talk about cutting entitlements while sanctioning military action in the Arab world and not also demand the Saudis and Egyptian government step in to use their massive military might, which we’ve made possible.
As for the women who continue to lead like men, I’ve written about it many times before, so none of this surprises me at all. Perhaps that’s why a woman has never been elected president, because no female has ever offered an alternative vision for the world and what it would mean for America in terms of war and peace.
That Pres. Obama has gone from deliberative and waiting for Arab nations and the world to join in, while not demanding more in the war of financial participation, as he also shrugs off Congress, reveals anything but “change we can believe in.”
This column has been updated, bumped.
UPDATE 3: Pres. Obama has announced no ground troops will be sent to Libya. So, time to revisit Gen. Wesley Clark’s warning this past week, “Libya isn’t worth the risk.” Clark remembers words that then Pres. Clinton said at the time, with there being a huge difference, part of which I mentioned today:
In 1999, when we launched the NATO air campaign against Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, President Bill Clinton had to state publicly that he didn’t intend to use ground troops. He did so in an effort to limit the costs of an initiative that the public and Congress did not consider to be in our nation’s vital interest. The administration and I, as the NATO commander in Europe, were in a difficult position, and Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic knew it. But what Milosevic didn’t understand was that once we began the strikes — with NATO troops deployed in neighboring countries and the Dayton Peace Agreement to enforce in Bosnia — NATO couldn’t afford to lose. And the United States had a vital interest in NATO’s success, even if we had a less-than-vital interest in Kosovo.
[...] It is hard to stand by as innocent people are caught up in violence, but that’s what we did when civil wars in Africa killed several million and when fighting in Darfur killed hundreds of thousands…
30 Responses to “Women War Hawks Win on Libya”
fairmindedindependent says
I thought SOD Robert Gates was against the no-fly zone also as well as the President !! So your right Taylor, It was the hawkish women who won !! I disagree with the President on somethings but not this one !! I feel sorry for the rebels and want them to win, but involving ourselves in another conflict is not the way to go. The United States could have armed the rebels and done other things but to involve ourselves in another conflict is not good. Thats another good quesiton you asked Taylor “Whos going to pay for the Military Action” and this country is supposed to be broke and were cutting back on alot of social programs !!I do hope Europe takes the major role in this as well as funding it !! I just don’t want the United States to become the Worlds police
19 March 2011 at 2:33 pm
Talk about exclamation explosion, FMI.
I just don’t want the United States to become the Worlds police !!
um… you’re a little late on this one.
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19 March 2011 at 2:58 pm
Taylor, you queried “Let me also ask a question no one seems to be asking: Where the hell are the Saudis and the Egyptians?”
Well, the Egyptians are a little busy with trying to restore a government of their own at the moment. As for the Saudis, I don’t really think they’ve got much of a real military. Let’s face it–that lack of a real military was the whole reason why the US had to fight Iraq in the 1991 Iraq war. They COULD, however, afford to pay Qaddafi’s supporters a few thousand “dollars” each to turn against him (IMS, Qaddafi paid out a few hundred “dollars” to every person willing to support him). It was just reported that the Saudi gov’t is raising the minimum wage and is (somehow) planning to create 60,000 new jobs (and, in the meantime, was sending troops to help the Bahraini gov’t).
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19 March 2011 at 3:15 pm
Are you kidding me with this crap?
Saudi Arabia is one of the fiercest fighting forces on planet earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_of_Saudi_Arabia
Obama just did the biggest arms sale in US history to the Sauds.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/13/us-saudi-arabia-arms-deal
Honestly…
As for Egypt, I wrote about this recently. We give $1.3 billion annually! Sheesh.
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19 March 2011 at 11:06 pm
Earlier today I read that Saudi and Egypt both were providing arms to the rebels in Libya. 21 countries are involved in the strikes on Libya today, and the claim is that the US is not the leading force. I haven’t seen a list of which countries they are, though.
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19 March 2011 at 3:13 pm
I find it hysterical that conservatives aren’t whining about how much this is gonna cost when they whine about the cost of programs that actually help Americans.
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19 March 2011 at 3:35 pm
In a post earlier this week I had maintained that despite my disagreement on a host of issues with the President, I was pleased that he so far had been resisting the Neocon pressure to take military action in Libya. That the pressure the President succumbed to was from “the Women War Hawks” in his administration is of no matter. The point is that the decision to intervene is still part of the Neocon theme to which this President has no backbone to fight. He absolutely has no desire to fight any fight.
TM all your points are spot on, especially the point about asking the American people for more sacrifice in spending and entitlement cuts , and who is going to pay for it all. It would not surprise me to learn that he made a secret deal with Boehner and McConnell for there support on some budget or debt issue, which I am sure they will immediately reneg on.
There is one more final white flag of surrender to the Neocons and the Republican right. Social Security-he will be going after it before the 2012 election in some manner, not after. I don’t see him having the stomach to fight it. The ongoing wilting of his spine is just about complete.
Just look at at the letter to Pres Obama from 64 Senators looking for some overall negotiation/agreement to stop these continuing stop gap spending bills as we approach the debt limit vote. I had maintained in a post a week or so ago here that Schumer is a weather vane for Social Security-he had come out in favor of leaving it alone. I said at that time that with Schumer taking a position it must be because the endgame is known and he can position himself as a hero. If Soc Sec is untouched-he led the charge to save it, if it’s cut he can say he led the charge to save it but was unsuccessful.Either way he’s a hero.
I believe with the Libya decision we also have the direction of the end game for Soc Sec in the upcoming /ongoing budget and debt talks.
If he caves on Soc Sec he will get his wish -he will be a one term President.
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19 March 2011 at 4:29 pm
TM, I read this article from February 2008 entitled “Obama’s women reveal his secret” (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB26Aa01.html) and never forgot it. I dismissed much of it back then as bitter political chum during the primary season. But, no one can dispute that the man in the White is not the same man who campaigned for the job. Perhaps this helps explains, why?
An article written the previous week in february 2008 about Obama is even more telling, now, in hindsight. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JA29Dj06.html
Progressives and Liberals should plan a conclave for Madison, Wisconsin 2 weeks before the Democratic Convention next year in North Carolina. This is the only idea I can think of that will implant a spine into the National Democratic Party. And, if the operation isn’t successful, then, maybe the people will seek an alternative solution.
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20 March 2011 at 6:43 am
TPAZ,
Having read Spengler in Asia Times I have come to the conclusion that the man is a palo-con crank of the first order.
Obama does not hate America. He is no radical. He is the son of his mother, but not this straw woman that Spengler waves around.
What Obama got from dear old mom was emotional aloofness and moral relativism. The man stands for nothing. For him all ideas, notions, passions are equally valid. Everything is in flux and process is the end all and be all of any effort.
Quote the article if you must but be advised, it is chock-a-block full of racism, misogyny, anti intellectualism and other bits of vicious rightwing hackery. The casting of the non-aligned movement as some sort of far left, fellow traveling, anti-U.S. plot is ahistorical and close to libelous. But libel seems to be this man’s stock and trade seeing how he treated both Obama’s mother and wife.
Stay away from Spengler, he is venomous troll who trades in lies.
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20 March 2011 at 11:53 am
spincitysd,
Thank you for your input. I really do appreciate it. As i mentioned at the outset, I dismissed much of its political vulgarity, but I am still searching for an answer to the burning question: how was the entire left’s compass off on Obama? Were we on the left that naive or were we duped? How do you see and explain the two Obamas? BTW, I supported HRC until Denver.
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19 March 2011 at 5:56 pm
“Did we learn nothing from preemptive war in Iraq?” — TM
No, we didn’t. Or at least that’s my take, given respones from Congress and White House.
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19 March 2011 at 11:10 pm
Wouldn’t someone involved in the decision to attack Iraq have to admit it was wrong in order to “learn something” from it? I believe the administration and the military see Iraq as a resounding success.
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20 March 2011 at 8:46 am
Agreed, and the perspective that Iraq was a resounding success is the indication of the failure to learn.
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19 March 2011 at 10:55 pm
america’s long tradition continues. ala woodrow wilson so well articulated- we don the sword and white cap in a crusade for freedom. it gets us into trouble time and again. bill clinton gave some great speeches on why america must be the world’s policeman- probably the best since wilson on the matter.
i find it funny sen lugar is on cnn saying obama is wrong bc he didnt get a decl of war on lybia from congress. i wish sen lugar was sooo worried when he voted for the auth for iraq- and that not a decl of war like fdr did in wwii. lugar is correct but uh he is part of the checks and balances here and congress should assert itself- they just let obama get us into a conflict with not even a vote! that is what is killing us- congress has reneged its duties. congress runs the money not obama yet keeps ceding power to the prez. we neeed balances. there is a reason why the founders wrote the constitution that way- and we are seeing what happens without the checks system no?
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19 March 2011 at 11:56 pm
I was reading that The African Union demands halt to all attacks after United States, France, Britain launch military attacks on Libya.
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20 March 2011 at 12:37 am
just saw on cnni- usa has amphibious ships offshore. wait arent not to send troops on their soil right? lots of question shere while o is in brazil. 8 yrs ago to the day we invaded iraq. obama rose to fame bc he said he opposed regime change. and now?
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20 March 2011 at 7:22 am
T4H,
The ARG (Amphibious Ready Group) has been circling the Libyan section of the Med for over a month. For almost the same amount of time I have been wondering, on this very blog, what the hell they might have in mind.
The ARG is too small to do anything other than take over an airport for a short duration of time. That is as agressive as they can get. It is no more than two battalions of Jarheads (US Marines) and the assorted brick-a-brack they need to do a little death and destruction. Without resupply and or reenforcement and depending on the breaks they might last 72 hours, a week if everything works out perfectly, before they would have to get the hell out of Dodge.
It is what may follow the ARG that keeps enemies up at night. Secure an airport and all sorts of neat toys that go boom can be delivered on top of the head of your least favorite despot. But is that the plan? With two wars of choice raging do we even have the follow up necessary to engage with Gaddafi?
I did finally get an answer to one of my other question though. I finally found out what types of gray things that float might be lurking in the Med along with the ARG. Arliegh Burke Class Destroyers http://bit.ly/daviqJ and other missile launching naval hardware. I was also correct in guessing that missile launching subs would be in the mix. Phase one of the No Fly Zone is now seriously at had. The Libyan air defense network has been beaten into rubble. Next up, NATO AWACs help NATO fighters slowly grind the Libyan air force into a fine powder.
While the Military escalation will follow a well defined path as laid down by Naval Doctrine I do wonder if Obama really understands the primrose path he is being lead down. The pressure to up the ante will become almost irresistible. I don’t see Obama avoiding sending a bird farm to assist in the Libyan turkey shoot. Look for a nuclear powered aircraft carrier to pop into view shortly. Oh, and do not believe for a minute the nonsense of this being a short, sharp engagement. US naval warships will be on station near Libyan waters until Gaddafi goes by-by.
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20 March 2011 at 4:29 pm
With two wars of choice raging do we even have the follow up necessary to engage with Gaddafi?
We don’t, at least, we shouldn’t. France and Italy do. My guess would be any really large force would come mostly from there. The Arab League may or may not want to show up, but not a lot of their forces are at all compatible with NATO’s, and they’re not generally outfitted as expeditionary forces, either.
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20 March 2011 at 12:57 am
Hope you all will keep adding what you’re reading & seeing on TV… I’ve got new updates up as well.
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20 March 2011 at 1:24 am
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum
"I was going to write one more post today about Libya, but I gave up. I don't know what's going to happen next, I don't know how things are going to turn out, and I don't really know if we're doing the right thing. As Matt Yglesias says, in this case "you have everything done right—a UN Security Council resolution, backing from the Arab League and the OIC, and a bad guy who is, loosely speaking, adequately nuts to seemingly put everyone off." But I'm still not sure we really know what our endgame is here". ~Kevin Drum @ Mother Jones
—
I don't know either.
On what basis are we to judge which of these middle eastern revolts are worthy of outside intervention, and which ones are not when one is really a catalyst for the other?
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20 March 2011 at 2:52 am
as news breaks of another oil spill from a deepwater rig near LA tonight a friend on fb sends me this in response- a classic:
“I know what you mean. Obama now looks like Bush, everything he touches turns to shit.”
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20 March 2011 at 9:28 am
Taylor,
I had a feeling that Obama would eventually pull the trigger on the No Fly Zone. Ever since Kerry started banging on about the need for a No Fly I just knew we were in trouble.
I will try to be cautious about what I say about the husband of Ms. Hinze since you might still be holding a candle for him. Still, “Treebeard” has to be one of the most conventional thinking and charisma-free Senators out there.
The man is pure Washington establishment, which is bitterly ironic. Back in the day, when Vietnam was in full roar, he was anti-establishment. What a difference forty year and getting waxed by frat-boy W makes.
Kerry is a member in good standing of the interventionist, do something crowd, that own DC foreign policy thinking. The naked truth is that the whole NeoCon movement is nothing more than a feckless search for an idea, a notion, that justifies continued US interference in every other nations’ business. Hegemony will be served after all.
After the head Ent checked in, it was only a matter of time before the usual suspects were rounded up. Unholy Joe Lieberman got on the train early. He was quickly joined by client number nine. With all the political firepower gathering around the camp ground of No Fly it was inevitable that Our Most Sacred Lady of the Tastefully Appointed Pant Suite would join the campfire to sing songs and toast marshmallows. With Hillary onboard Obama would, of course, be the last to cave.
Our foreign policy is addicted to the drug of interventionism. Even after the bad trips of Afghanistan and Iraq we are still looking for the next high. The feel-good experience of Gulf War I is mostly to blame. It reminded us how good this drug could be, something we had not really experienced since WWII. We so desperately want to have a “good war” again.
That is the primary reason we are in Libya, because we want to be the good guys again. We want to be heros again. As pointed out we really have no National Interests at steak. The humanitarianism angle is pure bunk; we did nothing in Rwanda or in Darfur to stop the slaughter in those places. No chance of a feel good moment in those two nations; just the grubby reality of civil war. It is best to beat feet there just like we did in Somalia and Lebanon.
So now we have rushed in were angels fear to tread do we really know what we are doing? From the NYT article is appears not. The world salad shooter is overdrive trying to thread a ridiculously small needle. I mean seriously, your shredding the air defenses of Libya but are perfectly fine with Gaddafi sticking around for while? You do realize that statement is transparently and fundamentally wrong. It is a non sequitur that no sane person takes seriously.
The utter confusion of the chattering class is distressing to observe. They want to ride the wave of democratic reform in the Arab world but all anyone has to whisper is “Al Queda” or “Iran” and the defenders of democracy pull up short. If you want to see this pointless flailing about, take a look at the U.S. policy in Bahrain. What an epic cock up that has been.
Now that the interventionist have captured Obama, it is going to be all flail all the time. The man, as has been pointed out by Taylor, is all transaction, all the time. Just as it is in domestic policy, it will be in foreign policy. There will be no guiding principle, just the art of the deal. Real National Interest will take a back seat to keeping the various pressure groups of DC happy. In trying to please everyone Obama will please no one. I don’t know if I really want to watch as the events in Libya unfold. I’m seeing an epic face plant by team Obama by the shores of Tripoli; someone please prove me wrong.
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20 March 2011 at 12:00 pm
Un-attacked North African and Middle Eastern nations are becoming our planet’s most precious natural resource. We are fast approaching peak-oil nations.
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20 March 2011 at 2:40 pm
This is the part that worries me:
The man, as has been pointed out by Taylor, is all transaction, all the time. Just as it is in domestic policy, it will be in foreign policy. There will be no guiding principle, just the art of the deal.
The proof that this is so is that he said he wouldn’t send in ground forces. You never says you’re not going to do something it might be tactically necessary to do later, particularly when you’re dealing with someone as delusional as Gaddafi. If he’d done that, though, Americans would be saying “Whoa, wait a minute!” right now. So he said the thing that got the deal done.
And, of course, we’re being lied to yet again, and, for the most part, we’re liking it.
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20 March 2011 at 2:41 pm
Crap. That should be “you never say…”.
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20 March 2011 at 12:47 pm
Spincitysd @9:38
Word, man.
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20 March 2011 at 6:51 pm
I second that notion~
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20 March 2011 at 3:05 pm
On Friday pretty much every “Progressive” talk show host in the country- Bill Press, Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller- suddenly became Pro-No Fly Zone, many after spending days declaring that it would be a terrible idea. Another example of the fact that so many “progressive” radio hosts are not progressives at all- just Democrats, and Obama Supporters. What was a horrible idea when it appeared Obama would not do it becomes “just common sense” when the President goes for it. Disgusting.
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20 March 2011 at 9:09 pm
It’s time for a trial separation based on irreconcilably differences. What comes next? a. We start a third party organized by Adan Green. b. We set up a 50/50 state registration project. One branch of the project will work on local and state candidates’ registration while the second branch work on the Presidential election registration process. c. We book Madison, Wisconsin as the location for a Liberal/Progressive conclave to be held 2 weeks before the Democratic Convention in North Carolina. d. We recruit Kucinich and Sanders to run. e. We work like hell to make this work.
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20 March 2011 at 10:36 pm
jjamele;
Stephanie Miller is so deep in the tank for Obama that her staff will have to offer hyperbaric treatment when his term of office is over. If she tries to just get out of the tank on her own, she most certainly will get decompression sickness. Ditto for Ed Schultz.