A powerful movement has been blossoming throughout the Arab and greater Moslem world. Average people are weary of their despots and their repressive governments. They see the world around them growing and changing while they remain trapped in a medieval social and economic prison. It is little wonder that the people of Egypt rose up and overthrew their government. Half the country struggles to live on $2 a day.
The people of Libya, seeing the courage of their neighbors, sought to throw off their aging and apparently insane dictator, Ghadafi. He seems an odd cross between a circus clown and a psychopath who appears to have few reservations with engaging in mass murder of his own people. For the last several years the best one could say about him is that he was a terrorist in remission and now, presently threatened, is suffering a public relapse.
The people of Libya had enough and rose up. The problem was and is that the courageous challengers to Ghadafi do not have the weapons or the experience to successfully fight. If left alone, crying for help, they were doomed.
We in the West and in Europe had three choices to the events in Libya. First, we could simply do nothing under the theory that what happens in that country is none of our business and none of our concern. Second, we could send in our weary troops from the fronts in Afghanistan and the streets of Baghdad to join the fight. Or third, we could join with the countries of Europe and the Arab world and give the freedom fighters a chance to win by grounding Ghadafi's airforce and crippling his machinery of war.
We did the right thing to intervene with the UN mandate and our NATO allies. President Obama made the right moral and strategic decision.
If anything, our country must always stand for the principles of freedom, democracy, and social and economic justice. To sit idly by and watch Ghadafi slaughter his own citizens would have been morally inexcusable. Equally inexcusable would have been to impulsively rush our young men and women into harm's way without international support or under false premises (weapons of mass destruction comes to mind). Not only can we ill afford a third war, such action would have more likely destabilized our relations in the region and invited greater conflict and hostilities.
Our politics is so strained and polarized now that whatever President Obama does is subject to intense criticism. As he worked for international support he was accused of being slow and indecisive. When he moved forward on Ghadafi these same people accused him of needlessly pushing us into a war without an exit strategy. These critics, and there are many, are far more interested in the political score than the fate of the Libyans and the principles that make this country great.
In the next few weeks, as the freedom fighters make progress and perhaps Ghadafi is found hiding in some bunker or basement in Tripoli, the naysayers will find something else for which to attack the president. And he, the great leader he is, will hold his head up and continue to make the hard decisions for which we can be proud to be Americans.
