“Limited intervention contrasts Obama with Bush,” said the Washington Post this past Friday, claiming that the low-cost eradication of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya went better than and was a rebuke to the more prolonged and costly excursion that put paid to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Well, it did, and did not. Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan after his country had suffered an unprovoked attack that killed almost 3,000 civilians and nearly decapitated the federal government by stateless and shadowy terrorists who spoke of more killing to come.
In the days after, the country was obsessed with what might have occurred had the terrorists possessed nuclear weapons. Bush invaded Afghanistan because the killers were based there, and Iraq because it had a hostile regime that invaded its neighbors, despised the United States, was friendly to terrorists, and was known to possess or be seeking biological, chemical or atomic weapons, whose existence and whereabouts it refused to discuss or reveal.
Democrats along with Republicans agreed that the Taliban in Afghanistan and nuclear weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to this country, which made invasion appropriate.
Libya, on the other hand, posed no threat to this country, and fell under the heading of a-good-thing-to-do-for-humanitarian-reasons-if-you-can-do-it-without-undue-sacrifice, which made it less urgent, and at the same time more attractive to liberals, who believe that using force to help others can sometimes be justified, while defending yourself or protecting your interests can be in the worst of bad taste.
As the head of the country that had been “invaded” by terrorists, Bush had the duty to lead in the fight to defend it, to organize a coalition to help him, and to go it alone if he had to.
Obama, on the other hand, not only “led from behind” — this is also called “following” — but had to be dragged into battle kicking and screaming, a week after France and Britain had begun to impugn him, and after the optimum date for a short war had passed.
Obama didn’t send troops, as troops were there already; he didn’t have to form coalitions, as they existed, and were busily pulling him in.
Bush, on the other hand, had to invade, as Saddam had an iron grip on his country, and had used chemical weapons against his own people. And why did Bush have to?
Because after the attacks, he was accused of a failure to “connect the dots” that would have let him pre-empt them. After them, he connected the dots, and they led to Iraq, the country most likely to hand a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon to a terrorist organization.
Efforts were made to get Saddam to admit United Nations inspectors, and all were rejected. And it seems a bit soon to call Libya a success (and Iraq a failure) as the ousting-Saddam part was handled quite brilliantly. The trouble occurred later on.
It is also worth noting that Obama was pushed into his action in Libya not only by the French and British (and by the Arabs), but also by Republican backers of the Iraqi invasion and of the surge afterward.
They urged Obama to act to prevent the massacre, but were also opposed to putting American boots on the ground. They knew the difference between one state of affairs and another, that what is appropriate in one case may be overkill elsewhere, and in a third case not nearly enough.
The situation dictates the approach, and not vice versa, except to the Washington Post, which seems to think differently. Iraq is like Libya, except that it’s different.
Otherwise, the two are exactly the same.
Examiner Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to TheWeekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
