Birth of Obama Doctrine

[monitor]

Birth of Obama Doctrine

US President's approach in Libya is that leaders must leave when their only means of staying in power is using violence on their own people.

SamiMoubayed

Back in 2008, then US presidential candidate Barack Obama appeared in a debate for the Democratic primary saying: "I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place."
He, of course, was speaking of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - two wars which he was not responsible for waging, and which he promised to bring to a dignified ending for the US.
The Iraq War, after all, has cost 36,000 lives and a staggering $750 billion while the one in Afghanistan has left 12,000 dead at an expense of $250 billion.
Both wars are still not over. Instead of transforming Iraq and Afghanistan into sustainable democracies, both countries are a mess when it comes to law, order, and security. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Osama Bin Laden - the prime target of the October 2001 war - is still on the run.
With so much luggage on his shoulders, it would have been wiser for President Obama to tie up the loose ends - stop the ongoing wars - before starting a new one in Libya, yet another Muslim country. Obama after all, rather than French President Nicolas Sarkozy, is the real man behind the 2011 war on Libya.
The writing for a military strike has been on the wall for weeks; senators like John McCain, John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman, in addition to former president Bill Clinton, have all called for US intervention in Libya.
As far as they were concerned, it seemed like Sarkozy was taking the lead in an international campaign to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, with Obama standing by and helplessly watching the US role being hijacked by France.
According to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, however, three quarters of Americans surveyed said that the US "should leave it others" to end the bloodbath in Libya. The American people simply had no appetite for a new war in the Arab world.
Obama realised that intervening in Libya ran the high risk of doing a great disservice to the Libyan rebels. He predicted that Gaddafi would immediately unleash his anger on them, claiming that the war was a 21st century crusade aimed at stealing the vast oil reserves of Libya. That is exactly what happened when the operations began last weekend. Within the Arab world, public reaction is mixed regarding the war in Libya. Although appalled by Gaddafi's brutality, many would have wished for the Libyan dictator to fall in a manner similar to Tunisia or Libya. Instead, what they are now getting is something that looks like Yugoslavia or Iraq.
Many are asking: "Why did the West not react earlier against Gaddafi, although the man has been suppressing his people for 42 long years?" Was it because of his U-turn since 2003, when he decided to abandon all anti-western behaviour and cooperate with the US? Obama's answer to that question came during a telephone conversation he recently had with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"When a leader's only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now."
Regardless of the recent past in Libyan-US relations, and in complete disregard of the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama's message was: dictators will not be allowed to rule in such a manner from this moment onwards. Just like the world changed forever for the US after 9/11, the same applies to the Arab world after the outbreak of the Tunisian Revolt last December. If Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali and Hosni Mubarak were forced to leave - then all dictators with similar characteristics should go, either at will or by force. This is the birth of what many hope will be the Obama Doctrine - a foreign policy approach that will either make or break his upcoming elections, depending on the outcome in Libya.
Obama is trying to get a message across that he is in favour of democracy and stability, a clear deviation from what Condoleezza Rice said during a 2005 speech at the American University of Cairo. Back then, Rice noted that for 60 years, the US favoured stability over democracy in the Arab world, and ended up with neither. Obama needs a major public relations campaign to explain his doctrine to the Arab world. Why does the US tolerate the use of force in the Occupied Territories while it opposes it in Libya? Back in 1956, then-US president Dwight Eisenhower fiercely condemned the Tripartite War on Egypt (launched by Israel, Great Britain, and France) because he had recently strongly condemned the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Eisenhower felt that his personal reputation was at stake if he criticised war in one country, and turned a blind eye to it in another.
Obama also has to make it clear whether this is a French and European war or an American one. When the Americans struck at Libya back in April 1986, The Economist wrote: "One of the things on the European side [of the conflict with Libya] is fear. Europeans are more vulnerable to terrorism. They have had more of it; they are closer to its Middle East command centres; their entry controls are sloppier; they have bigger pools of Arab immigrants among whom terrorists can swim."
Sarkozy wants to show the world that this has changed, and that this is his war, and that of Europe, rather than the US. The Obama Doctrine, however, is saying things differently.


Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine

 

[bling bling]

obama bastard is a liar and a cheat..he lied about rymond davis's diplomatic status...he lies everytime he shows up on tv...he is a good actor

 

[bling bling]

 

[monitor]

obama bastard is a liar and a cheat..he lied about rymond davis's diplomatic status...he lies everytime he shows up on tv...he is a good actor

within day you are banned cannot you become more civil in a public forum ? btw are you really from Libya ?

 

[monitor]

Libya: Obama’s Iraq – Analysis

Written by: B. Raman

“Despite the fact that it was French war planes which launched the first attacks, it’s clear that this early phase of the operations is an overwhelmingly American affair – all but a very small number of cruise missiles have been fired from American ships and submarines, ” said Paul Adams, the BBC correspondent in Washington DC, while commenting on the air and missile strikes launched by the US, France and the UK against ground targets in Government-controlled areas in Libya on the night of March 19, 2011.

As I watched the TV visuals and read reports on the strikes, I was reminded of what the George Bush administration called the decapitation strikes before it started the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The military action in Libya has been projected as having the limited objective of a humanitarian intervention to protect civilians in the areas under the control of the rebels. But its real objective is to have Muammar Gaddfi, the Libyan despot, removed from power as quickly as possible and instal a pro-Western leader at Tripoli so that Western oil and gas companies could return to Libya and resume oil/gas production.

Oil — and not human rights or concern for democracy — is the driving force in Libya as it was in Iraq. Saddam Hussein paved the way for his own isolation and destruction by antagonising his own people through cruel repression and his neighbours through his arrogance. Muammar Gaddafi has similarly paved the way for his own isolation and ultimate destruction through similar policies of repression and arrogance. No force on earth could have saved Saddam in 2003. No force on earth could save Gaddafi in 2011.


Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi

Gaddafi is politically doomed. When a ruler — be a democrat or a despot — loses the support of his people his end is inevitable. The question is no longer whether Gaddafi will fall, but when and under what circumstances. What suffering it would cause to the Libyan people? Are they going to be the real beneficiaries of the UN-authorised and Western-manipulated intervention or the consumer economies of Italy and other European countries dependent on the flow of oil and gas from Libya?

The Iraq invasion set in motion the train of events that ultimately led to the discrediting of the policy-makers of the Bush Administration in the US and the Tony Blair Government in the UK. As Obama himself had often conceded, the involvement in Iraq contributed to the USA’s difficulties in the region.

One thought Obama had learnt the right lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq. It is apparent he has not. After the Second World War, the US had rarely covered itself with glory when it embarked on external adventures—-whether it be in Kora or in Vietnam or in Somalia or in Afghanistan or in Iraq. If Obama thinks Libya could be an exception, he is mistaken.

The only effect of the Libyan adventure will be that the march of democracy, which started in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, will be stopped. The Arab despots, who have jumped into the Western bandwagon against Gaddafi, have done so not because their hearts bleed for the civilians in Libya and for their human rights. They have done so because they calculate that the diversion of the Western attention to Libya enables them to crush the human rights and aspirations for democracy of their own people.

The Western need for Arab support in Libya in order to show it as a truly international coallition of Western crusaders and Islamic people has already led to a cruel suppression of the pro-democracy agitators in Bahrain with Western voices and conscience remaining muted as the Sunni ruler, with the help of 2000 ground troops from the States of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), crushes the Shia protesters. Western near-silence in Bahrain today and in Saudi Arabia tomorrow is the quid pro quo for the Arab support in Libya.

Whatever be the outcome in Libya, its echoes will be heard wherever American lives are threatened and American interests are endangered — whether in the region, or in Yemen or in Egypt or elsewhere. We have seen the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan with a Neo Taliban keeping the NATO troops bleeding. We will be seeing a resurgence of Al Qaeda with a Neo Al Qaeda endangering American lives and interests everywhere. Anger breeds terrorism. More anger will breed more terrorism.


About the author:

B. Raman

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai and Associate, Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com

 

[Pancho2]

He only became libyan in march when it became relevant. Everyone can see that bs from miles away.

On the obama doctrine, I only wish it could be used equally for both ally and foe.

 

[Obambam]

Back in 2008, then US presidential candidate Barack Obama appeared in a debate for the Democratic primary saying: "I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place."
He, of course, was speaking of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - two wars which he was not responsible for waging, and which he promised to bring to a dignified ending for the US.

2008 = Vote for Presidency & Nobel Peace Prize money.
2011 = Oil money but he wants America to take a backseat because he doesn't want to gamble on his popularity, risking votes for the next presidential campaign.

 

[muse]

US President's approach in Libya is that leaders must leave when their only means of staying in power is using violence on their own people.

Do the Saudi Wahabi so called know of this or maybe this policy applies to those Muslm majority where US does not have bases - anyway's it's more rubbish people will have to grin and bear till, one day, some day... of course that will be "why do they hate us, Part II"