Richard Adams

Obama’s arguments for US action in Libya draws scorn from Sarah Palin and comparisons with Bush’s foreign policy Did the world witness the birth of an “Obama doctrine” in the president’s speech on Libya? Or is it just a thinly disguised version of George Bush’s doctrine? “It is stunning how similar in tone this speech is to George W Bush’s Iraq speeches,” was the response of former Republican congressman and TV anchor Joe Scarborough. Later, Scarborough accused Obama’s supporters on the left of hypocrisy: How can the left call for the ouster of Muammar Qadhafi for the sin of killing hundreds of Libyans when it opposed the war waged against Saddam Hussein? Erick Erickson, the influential Republican blogger, derided Obama’s justifications for military action. “Here comes the ‘I am George Bush, but I don’t want you to think I am George Bush’ line,” Erickson tweeted mid-speech . But otherwise Erickson was unimpressed : Obama’s doctrine or lack thereof is the foreign policy equivalent of being a little bit pregnant. Wants Gaddafi gone, but no regime change. Steven Metz, a professor at the US Army War College, heard echoes of Bush’s defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Obama’s arguments for international participation. “Rumsfeld believed that if the United States minimised its role in the stabilisation and reconstruction of Iraq, other nations would step up,” Metz wrote in the New Republic, explaining: Initially Bush was only addressing the September 11 attacks. The big ideas and the doctrines came later. Only time will tell whether an Obama Doctrine will emerge following this pattern. Defining the Obama doctrine proved more difficult. Aaron David Miller, a Middle East peace negotiator in the Clinton administration, told the New York Times : The Obama doctrine is the ‘hedge your bets and make sure you have a way out’ doctrine. He learned from Afghanistan and Iraq. On the more immediate question of whether the speech would win support for Obama’s action, the president found himself with some unusual supporters. One was the neoconservative cheerleader William Kristol, editor of the right-wing Weekly Standard , one of a small group of commentators Obama spoke to before his speech: The president was unapologetic, freedom-agenda-embracing, and didn’t shrink from defending the use of force or from appealing to American values and interests. Furthermore, the president seems to understand we have to win in Libya. I think we will. On the fringes of the Republican party Obama’s speech got qualified support from his 2008 opponent, Senator John McCain. But McCain is regarded with deep suspicion by many Republicans, and the party’s congressional leaders instead aimed criticism at Obama’s actions, saying he hadn’t explained the extent and costs of the US’s role and failed to gain approval from Congress. Sarah Palin represented a more mainstream Republican opposition, accusing Obama of a “dodgy” strategy. It was, Palin told Fox News , “full of chaos and questions”: [Obama] did not make the case for this intervention. US interests have got to be met if we are going to intervene. And US interests can’t just mean validating some kind of post-American theory of intervention wherein we wait for the Arab League and the United Nations to tell us ‘thumbs up America, you can go now, you can act’, and then we get in the back of the bus and we wait for Nato, we wait for the French to lead us. That’s not inspirational. At the National Review, unofficial house organ of the Republican right, the discomfort of America’s neocons was on display. While they liked military intervention against Gaddafi, they couldn’t rush to support a political opponent. “On paper, I agree with a lot of what Obama is saying,” said National Review commentator Jim Geraghty . “But he’s stringing together a lot of pretty-sounding phrases without really getting at the questions most skeptical Americans have: why intervene here and not in other places?” Marc Lynch, director of George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies, had an answer : “The fact that Cote d’Ivoire is awful is a terrible reason to oppose intervening to save Libyans from slaughter in Benghazi.” Update : The New York Times’s Michael Shear has a fascinating side-by-side comparison of the language used by Obama and Bush. Barack Obama Libya George Bush Sarah Palin US foreign policy Obama administration Republicans United States Richard Adams guardian.co.uk

Posted by on March 29, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.