In the early evening of March
28, 2011, President Obama addressed the American people and the world to
explain his administration’s involvement in the international coalition that
had been implementing a no fly zone over Libya while protecting Libyan
civilians from their own ruler. He sounded much more like the first President
Bush than the second in terms of foreign policy. Similar to how the
elder Bush had restrained himself from going all the way to Baghdad after he
had joined an international coalition in removing the Iraqis from Kuwait, Obama
said that directing American troops to forcibly remove Colonel Qaddafi from
power would be a step too far, and would “splinter” the international coalition
that had imposed the no fly zone and protected civilians in rebel areas of
Libya. Interestingly, in taking the elder Bush’s route, Obama came out strongly
against that of Bush II. Referring to the alternative of extending the U.S.
mission to include regime change, Obama stated, “To be blunt, we went down that
road in Iraq . . . regime change there took eight years, thousands of American
and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can
afford to repeat in Libya.”[1]
In effect, Obama was exposing a fundamental difference between George H.W. Bush
and his son by saying essentially the same thing as the elder Bush had done
while excoriating the foreign invasion of his son. Yet Obama did not stop
there. He added a theoretical framework that the elder Bush could well have
used.
The full essay is at "U.S. Justification for Limited Military Intervention."
