Some people are just ungracious:
Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi should have been killed in the early summer, former United Nations spokesman John Bolton said in the wake of his death on Thursday.
The Mad Dog of the Desert, as Ronald Reagan dubbed him, was killed in his hometown of Sirte on the Mediterranean coast the rebels announced…
…Bolton, a strident critic of the Obama administration, said the dictator should have been taken out in much earlier.
“If we had acted swiftly and decisively at the beginning of this thing instead of having it drag out for six months with a much higher toll in civilian deaths, we might have shattered Gadhafi’s government near the beginning of the conflict and brought it to a resolution sooner,” he told Fox News.
“It’s entirely appropriate that Gadhafi was killed this way but as symbolically important as it is, many of the big issues facing Libya remain.” Bolton warned though that some in Libya may now regard the tyrant as a martyr.
“This is certainly not the end of the struggle, it’s the end of Gadhafi – and that’s a good thing,” Bolton added.
To be fair, I made a similar argument in the spring. I argued that it would be risky to rely on the Libyan forces to remove Gaddafi because it would take many months to arm them up, that it would create a country filled with battle-scarred kids with a lot of weapons, and that prolonged conflict would create hard feelings that would be difficult to address. I think that the militias are going to be one of Libya’s biggest challenges. There was definitely a cost associated with doing this the slow way.
But there are many benefits, as well. It’s only fair to acknowledge them. First and foremost, it was much less expensive to restrict our military activities to air, naval, and intelligence assets. It’s also very important that the Libyans can claim this victory as their own, even if it was only possible because of NATO’s assistance. It was important to demonstrate that the U.S. can work with multilateral and international organizations like the United Nations, NATO, and the Arab League to accomplish specific and complicated goals. And the fact that we suffered no casualties is a major plus.
Finally, the president was able to maintain support for the mission for many months because of the small footprint and low budgetary impact of his strategy.
I recommended that the president not get directly involved in the Libyan civil war. I also believe his abused his power by not seeking Congressional authorization for the mission, which would have been forthcoming. And, I still remain concerned about how things will turn out in Libya. But the president smartly limited our role, showed patience, and now can rightfully take credit for the removal of one of America’s historic archenemies.
I’m gracious enough to give him credit, even as I am not happy about him ignoring the War Powers Resolution and remain worried about Libya’s capacity to end this war.
John Bolton has outlasted his shelf life. How often can someone be so wrong about US foreign policy and still get a hearing?
Yeah, I know.
There is nothing gracious about your statement, Booman. This reads like you were pounding the hell out of your well lit MacBook keys trying to find the right words to make you appear less of prick than John McCain and the GOP but still unwilling to just say you were wrong.
Again, I invite you to go back and find where I was wrong.
The claim that Congressional authorization “would have been forthcoming” doesn’t take into account this vote in the House of Representatives. Yes, the Republicans would say no even to war if Obama is the one asking for it.
The truth of the matter is that Obama met the notification requirements in the War Powers Resolution, but Congress failed to hold a vote within the 90 day limit. The Administration then presented an argument that the War Powers Resolution didn’t apply because U.S. forces were not directly engaged in “hostilities” (read the link for an analysis of this argument). Interestingly, the House vote allowed limited operations in Libya as long as U.S. forces didn’t engage in “hostilities”. Which the Administration had already argued they weren’t, so the were obeying the House’s vote (it’s almost like they knew this would happen…)
I’d like to see liberals showing more recognition that Congress failed to uphold their responsibility by holding the vote in a timely manner, and that this Republican-controlled House is insane and can’t be relied on to do the reasonable thing. To ignore this and just blame Obama for “failing to follow the War Powers Resolution” gives Congress a free pass that they don’t deserve.
it doesn’t need to take that vote into account because that vote never would have happened if Obama had asked for authorization.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. He sent the notifications to Congress as required by the WPR, the next step is for Congress to hold the vote. Can you provide more information on what he should have done to “ask”?
Careful now, you’re talking about the top candidate for Sec of State under a Cain, Perry or Romney admin!
c/t It would seem to dovetail into conversation being had about Obama’s announcement of full force withdrawal from Iraq by year’s end with the full denial vote by Rep’s for Jobs Bill that would give tax credit for employers who give jobs to vets.
Of course, supporting people power in Libya & pulling out of Iraq to let it look to its own sovereignty could be an a tiny spec of proof that O’s about to give further acknowledgment to our own OWS. 2011 has certainly been the Year of the People in every, way, shape and form imagineable (unless you’re an R and have no imagination).
I also have heard seemingly credible reports that the administration has been making use of the time to help the transitional government get organized and prepare for a post Gadhafi Lybia.
They have a long road ahead but I don’t expect it to be the madhouse Iraq was where we did zero actual planning for life after Saddam.
I do think Obama has set the bar pretty high for me with this stuff. Competency breed ever increasing expectations. That’s probably not realistic though.
I think it’s nuts to assume that a larger military footprint early on would have meant fewer civilian deaths.
It would have meant less accurate air missions. Those AC-130s that Republicans keep talking about? They fire gatling guns and artillery shells out of a door on the side of the airplane. Maybe some ground forces to move things along? Now we’ve actually got the civil war, the popular support for Gadaffi, maybe ending up in an insurgency against the invaders, maybe drawing thousands of jihadists into the country just to screw with us. They managed to set off some pretty nasty ethnic cleansing in Iraq with their campaign of bombing Shiites – to get at us, because we went in and took over the country.
I’m not seeing a recipe for fewer civilian casualties out of any of this.
Well, I certainly give credit for getting Libya ‘right’, when so many of the early signs were pointing the other way.
Well done, team Obama!
Now if they can only take the lessons learned from dealing with Libya and apply them to the congressional GOP…
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It was not possible to move faster to liberate all of Libya. A small population is divided across an extended Mediterranean coastline.
Cross-posted from my diary –
Muammar Gaddafi Was Most Likely Executed
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The slow way? What would have been the quick way?
Bolton’s comments are completely self-serving, but your’s suggests that you actually believe that the United States could have quickly targeted and killed Qaddafi if we’d simply put some effort into it. And that doing so would have reduced costs in lives and radicalization of the region.
The Iraq war fiasco should have put to rest some of these fantasies. In that case, we did things Bolton’s way. A decisive American commitment to capturing Saddam Hussein, complete with nearly 150,000 boots on the ground and all the power in our arsenal required to get the job done.
Iraqi result: it took 9 months to capture Saddam, by which time we’d spent roughly $50 billion, lost about 300 American soldiers, and over 10,000 Iraqis. We were then committed to staying until the country was ‘back on it’s feet’ and discovered that the population was perfectly capable of radicalizing itself. Current cost: 9 years, 4000+ dead American soldiers, 100,000+ dead Iraqis, millions of Iraqi refugees unable to return home and the ultimate price stands at several trillion dollars.
Libyan result: it took 6 months to capture Qaddafi, roughly $1 billion American dollars, zero American lives, and we’re done. There isn’t a good estimate of the number of Libyans killed yet, but it’s in the same range (10-30,000) and many of those deaths occurred before NATO took any action.
It seems to me that this was the quick, low cost way of ousting a dictator.