Obama: A Reluctant Warrior

I feel somewhat sorry for Barack Obama.  On the right, they call him a wimp, because he did not cowboy into Libya as GW ChickenHawk would have done.  On the extreme left, he is the war monger who plotted to further US imperialism by the same people who criticized Bush for not using the military to halt the genocide in Rwanda.  I think both extremes are wrong.  Personally, I like preventing Gaddafi from slaughtering his people, but I have severe reservations about the war.  However, I think that Obama has reservations too.  If he is mistaken, it is in caving into Clintonistas at home and allies abroad.

Maureen Dowd has an excellent editorial on the Clintonista role.

They are called the Amazon Warriors, the Lady Hawks, the Valkyries, the Durgas.

There is something positively mythological about a group of strong women swooping down to shake the president out of his delicate sensibilities and show him the way to war. And there is something positively predictable about guys in the White House pushing back against that story line for fear it makes the president look henpecked.

It is not yet clear if the Valkyries will get the credit or the blame on Libya. But everyone is fascinated with the gender flip: the reluctant men — the generals, the secretary of defense, top male White House national security advisers — outmuscled by the fierce women around President Obama urging him to man up against the crazy Qaddafi.

How odd to see the diplomats as hawks and the military as doves.

“The girls took on the guys,” The Times’s White House reporter, Helene Cooper, said on “Meet the Press.”

Rush Limbaugh mocked the president and his club of “male liberals,” saying: “Of course the males were opposed. It’s the new castrati. … They’re sissies!”

Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador and former Clinton administration adviser on Africa, was haunted by Rwanda. Samantha Power, a national security aide who wrote an award-winning book about genocide, was thinking of Bosnia. Gayle Smith, another senior national security aide, was an adviser to President Clinton on Africa after the Rwandan massacre. Hillary Clinton, a skeptic at first, paid attention to the other women (putting aside that tense moment during the ’08 primaries when Power called her “a monster”). She also may have had some pillow talk with Bill, whose regrets about Rwanda no doubt helped shape his recommendation for a no-fly zone over Libya.

How odd to see Rush and Samantha Power on the same side… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

In understand that allies planes are already flying more missions than US aircraft, and Obama keeps claiming that the US is just a participant, not the leader.

Rachel Maddow reports on Obama’s reluctance and discusses the Muslin view of American intervention with Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin.

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I think the final proof will be found in the results.  If Europeans do, in fact take the lead, limiting US involvement, if no US ground forces are committed, and especially if Daffy is overthrown in short order, Obama will be judged heroically.  But if this turns into another Afghanistan, I will be regretting my early acquiescence to US participation.