Obama's Weakness On Libya

For the so-called leader of the free world, President Obama has been noticeably weak and timid in endorsing democratic movements in the Arab world.

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Obama, it should be emphasized, has been indifferent to democracy in the region since his presidency. President Bush paid words and even some deeds to promoting democracy in the region, but for Obama it wasn't even a factor of concern. Instead he bowed down to the monarch of the Kingdom of Horrors (Saudi Arabia), cut U.S. aid to Egyptian pro-democracy NGOs and refused to brand ex-dictator Mubarak as "authoritarian", and during the Tunisian Revolution his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated to Arab television that the U.S. is "not taking sides" between a brutal tyrant and his in-laws described by her own diplomats as a "quasi-mafia" (hat tip: Wikileaks) and students, workers and lawyers being gunned down.

It will always be remembered that Obama only recognized the Tunisian people and their aspirations, and their right to choose their own leader, after the White House made sure that ex-dictator Ben Ali left the country. Just like it will be remembered that Obama only used the word "democracy" in reference to Egypt after Mubarak stepped down.

The record on Libya is far worse. For all their ills, Ben Ali and Mubarak were rational men with limits to their tyranny. Libya's Gadhafi is a self-styled revolutionary fanatic who terms himself the "king of kings" and truly Africa's contemporary Idi Amin. This longest ruling of Arab tyrants has unleashed the army and air force against his own people along with imported mercenaries. Soldiers who refused orders to fire on their own people have been food purged into death.

Thousands may have died in Libya already and Gadhafi still has a lot of fight in him and may even survive. He is pushing back against opposition force who until now had the upper-hand and slowly undoing Gadhafi's remit from much of the country. But the rebels are poorly armed and inexperienced against a heavily well-armed elite force which Gadhafi has kept close by precisely due to fear of such a revolt.

If Saddam Hussein was able to crush the rebellion against him and eventually kill 60,000 of his people, Gadhafi may be equally brutal.

And what has Washington offered? Instead of arming the democracy rebels and/or enforcing a no-fly zone they have opted to just sit and watch the developments. As if that wasn't bad enough to leave the rebels to their fate of eventually being overrun and massacred, Obama's ignorant and inept intelligence chief recently told a Congressional committee that his team believes the Libyan dictator will survive. Could there be a more demoralizing message to the Libyan people and a more encouraging signal to Gadhafi than the U.S. intelligence head saying that Washington predicts the dictator will continue to reign?

The rebels will conclude that Washington does not intend to help them and will grow wry and some may even bolt and seek to flee the country before it's too late, and Gadhafi has just gotten vindication for his bloody push back.

Obama's approach has not only been incredibly weak but the words of his intelligence chief border on the verge of being an endorsement of the dictator and are certainly careless and counterintuitive to the cause of freedom, just shy of being criminal.