Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air is understandably exasperated and angered by the Obama administration’s “lack of leadership and the vacillation” on Libya, to say nothing of their “weakness and incompetence.” I couldn’t agree more with his exasperation and anger—and reading team Obama’s juvenile excuses and shallow rationalizations for not having acted until now (see, e.g. today’s New York Times article) made me not just angry but almost sick this morning.
Having said that, I must respectfully take issue with Morrissey’s notion that “the axiom ‘better late than never’ doesn’t apply in warfare.” It sometimes does apply. It was better to act late rather than never in Bosnia in 1995, and for that matter in Iraq (when we should have acted in 1991). It certainly would have been better to have acted sooner in Libya—as many of us have been urging—but in this case the situation still seems fluid, and we shouldn’t let up making the case for action, especially since the administration finally seems to be considering serious action.
