President Obama fended off criticism from both the right and left last night as he sought to justify the first war launched by his administration — saying air strikes in Libya prevented massive slaughter while cautioning that inaction would carry “a far greater price for America.”
Obama sought to defend the intervention while insisting that the United States is pulling out of the Libya operation, handing control to NATO after halting Moammar Gadhafi’s brutal attacks. But he took fire from the left last night while getting mocking attaboys from the right.
“For those who doubted our capacity to carry out this operation, I want to be clear: the United States of America has done what we said we would do,” said Obama in his 25-minute address delivered last night to midcareer military officers at the National Defense University in Washington.
U.S. Rep. Michael E. Capuano (D-Somerville), said, “How do you win when you don’t know what the objective is?” He said Congress should have been allowed to vote on the intervention. “I still believe that Congress has a role to play, a constitutionally mandated role. There was nothing that explained his ability to take direct action.”
University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, the conservative blogger known as Instapundit, declared, “Eerily like a Bush speech, but without the conviction.”
William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, meanwhile, said, “You’ve come a long way, baby. That was a pretty unapologetic, freedom-agenda-embracing, no-shrinking-from-the-use-of-force, presidential speech.”
But Boston College law professor Richard Albert said, “He hasn’t articulated in a compelling or coherent fashion the organizing logic that frames his administration’s foreign policy.”
Obama said, “To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and — more profoundly — our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”
“The democratic impulses that are dawning across the region would be eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship, as repressive leaders concluded that violence is the best strategy to cling to power,” Obama said. But he added, “Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.”
Citing Iraq, he said, “Regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.”
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http://www.bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view/2011_0329obama_defends_us_role_in_libya/
Obama sought to defend the intervention while insisting that the United States is pulling out of the Libya operation, handing control to NATO after halting Moammar Gadhafi’s brutal attacks. But he took fire from the left last night while getting mocking attaboys from the right.
“For those who doubted our capacity to carry out this operation, I want to be clear: the United States of America has done what we said we would do,” said Obama in his 25-minute address delivered last night to midcareer military officers at the National Defense University in Washington.
U.S. Rep. Michael E. Capuano (D-Somerville), said, “How do you win when you don’t know what the objective is?” He said Congress should have been allowed to vote on the intervention. “I still believe that Congress has a role to play, a constitutionally mandated role. There was nothing that explained his ability to take direct action.”
University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, the conservative blogger known as Instapundit, declared, “Eerily like a Bush speech, but without the conviction.”
William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, meanwhile, said, “You’ve come a long way, baby. That was a pretty unapologetic, freedom-agenda-embracing, no-shrinking-from-the-use-of-force, presidential speech.”
But Boston College law professor Richard Albert said, “He hasn’t articulated in a compelling or coherent fashion the organizing logic that frames his administration’s foreign policy.”
Obama said, “To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and — more profoundly — our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”
“The democratic impulses that are dawning across the region would be eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship, as repressive leaders concluded that violence is the best strategy to cling to power,” Obama said. But he added, “Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.”
Citing Iraq, he said, “Regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.”
Read More
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view/2011_0329obama_defends_us_role_in_libya/
