Barack Obama’s speech on Libya last night was a curious beast — both ambitious and cautious at once. The president surprised Washington by articulating a big idea about American power. But he may have disappointed Americans by dancing around the challenge that remains in Libya.
Obama was clear enough, to be sure, about why he chose to intervene in Libya. With his army outside Benghazi, Obama said, Moammar Gaddafi was prepared to commit “a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.” That would not just have been a moral abomination, the president argued, but a strategic calamity that might send droves of refugees into Egypt and Tunisia, straining their fragile transitions; it would also set an example to other tyrants that “that violence is the best strategy to cling to power.” Moreover, Obama said that to allow Gaddafi to defy the United Nations would be “crippling [to] its future credibility.”
Finally, what about Colin Powell’s famous “Pottery Barn rule”? Imagine that Gaddafi is toppled, and his army and security forces are crushed or melt away. Perhaps tribal warfare rages over the country’s oil wealth. Maybe al Qaeda leaps to exploit and aggravate the instability. Violent anarchy could break out around the country. Sound familiar? That’s what happened in Iraq. We don’t need to invade Libya to see an Iraq-like outcome. And in Libya the result could be a loss of life on a scale potentially greater than the massacre we likely averted in Benghazi. Having facilitated a change in regime, can America really stand by and watch that happen?
Obviously it’s too much to expect a president to address every worst-case scenario that might result from his policies. And it’s entirely possible that Gaddafi will soon be on a Lear jet to some friendly African nation to live out his life in luxurious exile. Moreover, the White House says that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will offer more detail about the Libya endgame during public remarks in London today.
But the fact remains that Obama has surely not spoken for the last time about Libya. He may have clarified his views on the important question of when and where America will use force to defend its interests and values. His views about what obligations America may have in the aftermath remain as murky as ever.
See exclusive photos of Libya’s rebels.
How Will the U.S. Get Out of Libya?
