Natalie Gonnella
In his latest column in the New York Times today, Ross Douthat outlines the 'what', 'who', 'when' and 'why' that President Obama needs to clarify in this evening's speech to the nation on the current situation in Libya.
While the president will likely be avoiding words like "war" in his remarks, Douthat notes that "by any name or euphemism, the United States has gone to war, and there are questions that the president must answer."
Here's a look at the four imperative points Douthat says the White House must address in tonight's speech:
What are our military objectives? If the rebels stall out short of Tripoli...how will we respond? With a permanent no-fly zone, effectively establishing a NATO protectorate in eastern Libya? With arms for the anti-Qaddafi forces, so they can finish the job? Either way, the logic of this conflict suggests a more open-ended commitment than the White House has been willing to admit.
Who exactly are the rebels? The rebels don’t need to be saints to represent an improvement on Qaddafi. But given that we’re dropping bombs on their behalf, it would be nice if they didn’t turn out to be Jacobins or Islamists.
Can we really hand off this mission? Obama has said our involvement will be measured in “days, not weeks.” With one week down already, is this really plausible? And anyway, how responsible is it to commit American forces to a mission and then suggest, as a senior administration official did last week, that “how it turns out is not on our shoulders”?
Is Libya distracting us from more pressing American interests? While we’ve been making war on Qaddafi’s tin-pot regime, our enemies in Syria have been shooting protesters, our allies in Saudi Arabia have been crushing dissidents, Yemen’s government is teetering, there’s been an upsurge of violence in Israel, and the Muslim Brotherhood seems to be moving smoothly into an alliance with the Egyptian military. Oh, and we’re still occupying Iraq and fighting a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and trying to contain Iran.
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