Listening to President Obama’s rationalization for going to war against Libya yesterday afternoon, as he remanded America, oddly, unhistorically, to a chair in the rear of the auditorium, an old family image sprang to mind:
My parents had returned from the grave. Assembling all seven of us in the sunny living room of our childhood home — I, the oldest, was age 12 — they announced a sudden, dramatic shift in family dynamics, away from the clatter and chatter. Because they were repairing permanently to the upper floor of our home, hereafter we seven would be in charge of our own lives. We would be responsible each other’s welfare. We could come and go as we wished.
The point common to both cases: The putative leaders were going away to stay.
Now we Americans are on our own, probably for the first time in history. The President checked out and did not leave a mental forwarding address. (Cursed with such dark qualities, he could have been a former Mrs. Noonan.)
With Mr. Obama having washed his hands of the nasty mess, without instructions or even a generic plan, we are indefinably committed to an open-ended war in a country 95 percent of us could not find without a GPS.
One of the few clear declarations the Prince of Passivity made was that his watch is up.
Oh? So suddenly?
Someone, he said, we are not sure who, from NATO, we are not sure when, is sliding into the gun-seat to lead the Allies through the rest of the Libyan war, regardless of how long it endures.
He repeated for his many critics and surviving friends: Not anything that happens between this afternoon and 2012 is his fault. The last 9 or 10 days should not mar his otherwise unassailable combat record as President because he was just reacting to the most overwhelming humanitarian crisis in the world.
Acting as if he were a desperate-to-graduate student who needed 30 minutes of community service to qualify, he bopped into Libya via red-eye to gain eligibility for something or other. Didn’t this bumpkin tell us during his incessant campaigning that he was anti-war? Except for the dead bodies accrued during this period, I guess a 9- or 10-day war is a hiccup.
He must have gone into Libya because he concocted the shakes and just couldn’t help himself.
I don’t know whether we should have gone into Libya.
But we should have stayed out or committed with clarity and emphasis, two of his many vulnerabilities. We sort of did go in and we sort of did not — a line that defines the Obama administration.
His see-through speech is ripe and plump for the pickings. He was trademark vague, his most identifiable trait. Why are we there? It seems as unfair to criticize Mr. Obama’s rhetorical limpness as it is to bet on a tub of lard to win a marathon.
He said that America has “an important strategic interest in preventing Gadaffi from overrunning those who oppose him. A massacre would have driven thousands of additional refugees across Libya's borders, putting enormous strains on the peaceful — yet fragile — transitions in Egypt and Tunisia.”
Since last night’s dinner hour, I have been turning these two sentences around like a Rubik’s Cube, trying to discern even a child-like meaning. All answers have eluded me.
What is our strategic interest in preventing Gadaffi (today’s preferred spelling but probably not tomorrow’s) from killing a bunch? Search me. And the President did not leave a trail of clue-laden crumbs.
You may recall that a few years ago our liberal friends tattooed President Bush with his exit strategy for Iraq and Afghanistan. How can you blunder into war, they asked on every television channel, without an escape strategy?
When the question arose last night, the answer was cough-cough.
Two springtimes ago when Iran blew up after the Smiling Dwarf rigged another election, Mr. Obama pushed his fists deep into each hip pocket and etched an inscrutable expression across his frequently expressionless face. He said it was not our business that the Persian mullahs were destroying their own people and were conniving with the secular screwballs in building a nuclear program.
Oh.
Or how about this Obama oldie but goodie line:
“We continue to pursue the broader goal of a Libya that belongs not to a dictator, but to its people.”
Does anyone in Newspaperland have any idea what that means, especially since President Not My Fault said the goal is not to evict Gadaffi?
Remember what your teacher used to see: Explain and defend.
But when you are President Obama, you are the boss without responsibilities — the most desirable job on the planet. When speaking, you are free to declare a series of ambivalent flourishes, take one step back and say to mystified journalists, “Sorry, boys, no questions until after my re-election is assured.”
