Posted on 03/04/2011 5:03:02 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Several factors catalyzed the Arab spring. But the Bush Doctrine set the premise.
Voices around the world, from Europe to America to Libya, are calling for U.S. intervention to help bring down Moammar Qaddafi. Yet for bringing down Saddam Hussein, the U.S. has been denounced variously for aggression, deception, arrogance, and imperialism.
A strange moral inversion, considering that Saddam’s evil was an order of magnitude beyond Qaddafi’s. Qaddafi is a capricious killer; Saddam was systematic. Qaddafi was too unstable and crazy to begin to match the Baathist apparatus: a comprehensive national system of terror, torture, and mass murder, gassing entire villages to create what author Kanan Makiya called a Republic of Fear.
Moreover, that systemized brutality made Saddam immovable in a way that Qaddafi is not. Barely armed Libyans have already seized half the country on their own. Yet in Iraq, there was no chance of putting an end to the regime without the terrible swift sword (it took all of three weeks) of the United States.
No matter the hypocritical double standard. Now that revolutions are sweeping the Middle East and everyone is a convert to George W. Bush’s freedom agenda, it’s not just Iraq that has slid into the memory hole. Also forgotten is the once proudly proclaimed “realism” of years one and two of President Obama’s foreign policy — the “smart power” antidote to Bush’s alleged misty-eyed idealism.
It began on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s first Asia trip, when she publicly played down human-rights concerns in China...............
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
The reason Obama is treading softly is he know this and people in Libya have had it with him and begging for Bush.
Mr. Obama has no foreign policy.
He also has no idea of the world outside of spending America into a deep, deep pit.
Here endeth the lesson.
-Rex
Is Krauthammer saying we SHOULD intervene in Libya’s civil war? Is he saying we SHOULD foment revolution in China? Was Obama right to support the uprising in Egypt or not? What exactly is he saying? Should we topple every dictator? Did we invade Iraq to spread democracy, or to locate and confiscate WMD? Is there any action anywhere in the globe that a neoconservative considers not our business? Apparantly not.
lol
No, he's saying that critics of Bush are hypocrites.
I thought it would take 10 years for the American Public to reevaluate GWB and his contribution to the establishment of democracy and freedom in the Middle East and elsewhere.
History will not be written by the radical left wing media but by true historians.
I wonder if a case could be made that Bush raised expectations in the Middle East. Iraq was getting fixed. Afghanistan was getting fixed. Libya gave up its WMD, the Palestinians were imploding, Iran seemed on the verge of demonstrations. Clearly, the ME was moving in a good direction.
Then Obama came in, and all of a sudden there was no reason to expect help from the US. The bad guys started to get pats on the head, and the good guys lost their funding. The momentum slowed or stopped -- and since things were no longer moving fast enough, revolutions broke out all over the place.
Wake up Chuck. The 3-faced taqiyyalike-talkin' totalitarian statist/collectivists of a feather always play it anyway they want anytime they want with amplification from their enablers. YOU could run this critique everday (going back to at least Vietnam) and direct your fire at many more specific individuals. Re-examine the enemy within. Just look at Barack's methods/tactics. Where have YOU been?
maybe North Africa is having a Mint Tea Party moment.
Charles speaks too soon. People like him think we all consider democracy as being freedom. I am quite sure those people fighting Gaddafi would like nothing better than for us to shoulder the cost and blood for their democracy. After the dust settles, they will turn on us.
It is a habit.
Are Iraq War critics saying we should invade Libya? I’ve heard talk of no-fly-zones, which we had in Iraq under Democrat regimes, and even those aren’t going anywhere without UN or NATO approval. Who is saying invade and occupy Libya, or Egypt, or Tunisia, or anywhere? I haven’t seen anyone proposing massive invasions and nation-building. Maybe I missed that.
Well let's see. We invaded Iraq in 2003, right? So we can evaluate in him two more years. I'll get a head start and say the Iraq war still looks like a collossal waste.
He’s just serving up neocon spin. Neocons love Empire, especially when someone else does all the fighting.
No. Krauthammer is saying that the one the main tenets of the Bush Doctrine is proving correct. That is, once the Arab world has democracy as alternative to dictatorship and jihad, they will choose democracy. This is one of the main factors that influenced his decision to oust Saddam.
The Dems argued that that the Muslims were incapable of democracy, that it was not in their culture, that they didn’t want it or need it. From day one, that sounded like non-sense to me. It reminded me of those old news clips of the racist whites saying, “blacks aren’t smart enough to learn to read.” Still, the notion that Muslims were not capable of democracy was so quickly embraced by the left I was stunned.
One more note. We did not invade Iraq to give them democracy. We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan for that matter because their wretched leaderships and violent politics were spilling into the West. This forced us to do what we did. And, it’s starting to seem like a very wise choice with each passing day, month, and year.
While they want to be rid of the despot, they still desire Sharia law. Not exactly democracy in my opinion.
My exact thoughts. Warring is fun as long as their own blood doesn’t spill.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Democracy to them is which Mullah do we choose.
Of course, that could be our fate they way things are going.
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