Welcome PAJAMASMEDIA Readers!
Once upon a time, In his book "The Audacity of Hope," Big Guy (allegedly) wrote that "without a well-articulated strategy that the public supports and the world understands" U.S. military action would lack international legitimacy.
So last night he made a speech intended to give a well-articulated strategy for our military action in Libya in order to garner public support both at home and around the world. Big Guy has always been one to take good advice from people who know what they’re talking about: in this case, Bill Ayers.
The speech was designed to respond to all criticisms. Butt just between you and me, Big Guy was just a little ticked off that people expected him to explain the decision he made - 10 days ago, already - to bomb Libya. Isn’t it obvious that he was attempting to encourage regime change avoid a slaughter of the Libyan people and/or prevent a whole bunch of refugees from spilling over the border and causing problems elsewhere? Because we know what a problem that can create.
So BO highlighted the objectives of our latest kinetic humanitarian action involving heavy military equipment: beginning with the effective promotion of American values (freedom, democracy, blah, blah, blah) that we believe in when they prove to be useful to our means.
We imposed a no fly zone which was so effective that it was immediately escalated to include bombing specific on-ground targets. (Butt not Qaddafi, because while we may or may not be in favor of regime change, we don’t want to be the ones they’ve been waiting for to depose their tyrannical dictator. That’s no longer an American value. That was Bush’s war.) And U.N. Secretary Susan Rice just announced this morning that our no-fly zone mission might be expanded to include arming the rebels! How’s that for an exit strategy for a limited engagement? Almost as good as providing “advisors.”
And we also froze $30 billion of Qaddafi’s assets, which we’re going to give back to the Libyan people, less processing and handling, as calculated by the CBO. So far, they owe us another $25 billion.
definitely in the cat bird seat
So in summary: this is a historic, time-limited, scope-limited kinetic military action. And it’s really no different than providing humanitarian aid to earthquake, flood and hurricane victims. Butt we’re handing it off to NATO – did I mention that?
Most importantly, our limited KMA will prevent the dreaded domino effect that could spread to other countries like Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and Iran. It’s what we do around here: avoid tumbling dominos with humanitarian relief. And fighter jets. And arms for the rebels. Butt not one drop of blood for oil (each gun will come with a list of terms and conditions).
And let me be clear: Big Guy, as leader of the free world, has decided to hand the mantle of our humanitarian kinetic military action off to NATO ‘R US on Wednesday. Or, as it turns out, some later date.
So there it is, the New Obama Doctrine: Suboptimal Transferable Future Unanimity.
if you’re collecting our Administration’s new acronyms, that’s STFU. Add it to WTF and KMA, to own the complete collection.
Linked By: Clarice Feldman @ PAJAMASMEDIA Thanks Clarice!
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